steve32

Technically, none of the OW airlines have to have all their award availability that is open to their own FFers also all be open to all their partners--there is usually some difference. Qantas takes that even further and opens their awards to booking for their own FFers up to 25 days before anyone else in a a partner FF program can try to book it.

Given that it has a virtual monopoly on domestic travel down there, and the extreme popularity of travel between "Oz" and the USA, it's understandable that there are additional hoops to jump through.

Personally, I was on the phone for about 2 hours every night for weeks working on trying to find intercontinental availability in/out of Australia in business award seats for myself and my parents. (And that time was down to that after I made a matrix of all the OW routings I could figure out to get in and out--admittedly, I was more restricted in my timing of available dates as I was planning on a 33-day, six stopover mega-trip which had a fixed start date due to it having to correspond to a scientific conference in Tokyo in mid-September.


Also, don't forget alternative routings. I would not turn up my nose at taking BA from LHR-SYD (with a fuel stop in either Bangkok or Singapore). Yes, it will be a couple k-miles longer schlepping all the way to SYD from LHR, but to find seats you may need to be more creative in your routing (at no penalty until after Sept. 1 for booking); and frankly I prefer BA business to QF business.

You can also look for routing via HKG. From NYC, it's nearly 300 miles shorter to Hong Kong (sort of the OW hub in East Asia) via LHR than LAX. You can jump from there directly to AYQ, and back from CNS (realizing that they will not be as large and nice planes as the trans-Pac 747 or 380).

Steve