Happy

I am sorry you think it is a lecture when I merely state that I understand the process because redeem an award on partner is not something new to me, I also know there are airlines their systems would automatically cancel the reservations after certain time has passed when there is no valid ticket issued against the reservation. That is not a lecture, but gives more information / fact, when Calculon thought I was not aware the difference between a reservation made by an agent versus a reservation made by a customer online, when he also cited AA's held policy on award booking. It is actually not very relevant. I do want to point out the risk of losing an award reservation when ticketing is delayed for too long. It CAN happen.

As I said I have not booked a QF award for quite a while, plus previous experiences were with AA, so no idea on how AS works. It seems to me AS booked awards tend to have more issues than AA booked awards but that is part of the compromises we are willing to make due to its favorable charts.

What I most not understand is why QF system would accept the change yet AS would need to manually call their QF liaison person to get the ticket reissue. That part does not make sense to me.

Other than telling me to be patient, it does not seem anyone, including you, has an explanation on that. I was hoping some one would have more insight, or have some experiences on how AS inner system works. Apparently this is too high an expectation on my part. Sorry to offend you by that. Though I also cannot help but wonder WHY you give me the link of my own post as an "information"? A bad joke?

Calculon

Mauibaby2008

beckoa

Yes.

May have shared this before, but I had a QF award that I changed online to add BNE-MEL. Turns out this didn't reticket and AS did not secure the U space (Biz).

I go to checkin and encounter an issue the night before. Not successful. I was perplexed as AS and QF both showed the seats assigned, and flight segments. Called AS (via skype) and the agent said it had not ticketed. I pushed the issue, and finally got in touch with someone who could help. They reached out to QF and opened up some U class on the flight (a family member was on this as well via BA). This took several hours, and the QF Liaison was reached out to in order to fix. Glad I found out before I got to the checkin counter.

So, things can look ok up until departure. But they might not be.

Happy

UPDATE!

This is for Public Service Purpose. Posted my experiences so hopefully in the future if anyone runs into similar situation, they would have better understanding on what might go wrong, and know better on how to get it fixed.

Reticketed today 90 min ago, done by a super knowledgeable, super helpful, and super friendly supervisor after he quickly took a look on the sequence of events on the reservation. There is absolutely NO NEED to talk to QF Liaison Office. The mistake happened when the Queue Desk ONLY revalidated the tickets without reissuance. The supervisor fixed it.

I posted more details on the QF forum when I asked was there other phone number to reach QF to verify whether they have seen a VALID ticket for the reservation. Those who are interested can go over it. Hopefully it would give some useful information on how to handle it in case anyone who runs into similar situation.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/30206677-post5.html

The take away is, instead of just waiting when things dont look like based on one's own experiences, CALL to find out where the issue may be. In my case I would wait forever and the issue would still be there due to the Queue Desk has bungled its job - instead of reticketing it, they revalidated it. The supervisor said that ain't going to work!

The revalidation actually took place in less than 2 hours at 5:43pm Pacific Time after the initial queue before 7pm EST. Unfortunately revalidation is NOT the way, it has to be reticketed.

Once I got this supervisor, it took him less than 2 minutes to see where the issue is. He asked what the last ticket numbers I had, and then immediately saw the problem.

To paraphrase his words -
"I see the Queue Desk validated it BUT WE NEED TO RETICKET IT SO THE PARTNER AIRLINES GET THE NEW TICKETS. Let me re-issue the tickets for you now."

He was able to give me the new eTicket Numbers when he came back on the call. The Confirmation email came some 15 min later after we finished the call.

He was also very kind to tell me to check AS account to make sure I see the Receipt now reflects the NEW TICKETS while we are still on the call.
We stayed on the call for a little longer. I told him I have learned to write down the ticket number each time a reservation is ticketed / reticketed. That way I can go back to compare if I indeed receive new ticket on a change or not. He said that was a very good practice to make sure proper reticketing has been done for each change on partner awards. Even agents often are confused especially the newer ones, he said. For him, he has been on the job for almost 32 years now, so he "has seen it all."

I feel there is some design flaw in AS system that the Receipt with Old Ticket Number would reflect the New Itinerary. This threw the first international desk agent off. She insisted the new itinerary was already ticketed but in all reality it was not. For that I think AA system in the past was better that if it is not successfully reticketed you would not even be able to pull up the receipt UA would not show new itinerary on old receipt. Though sometimes you have to do some tricks to get the system kick out the old receipt and show the new ones (using new email address to request a receipt often does the trick.)

Again, I hope the above information and the more detailed one on the thread in QF forum would be of some help for others in the future.

I just feel sorry for the average travelers who have not had knowledge on how airline systems work. That would explain why we sometimes see passengers spend looong time at check in counter while several agents huddled together, pecking on their computers / holding their phones... I would do my best to prevent this ever happen to us on our travels. The only way to make sure that is to take initiatives to get a resolution when experiences told me something was not right.

Happy

Thanks beckoa for posting your experience. It reinforce the need to reticket when there is a change on a partner award, no matter how small (from a 15 min schedule change) or how big (adding a new segment). Any change requires reticketing.

Yes, what the reservation shows is NOT a guarantee what the ticket actually reflects. I am so glad you posted this to show one more time, a reservation and the ability to select seats do NOT mean you are ticketed.

So many people even on Flyertalk, do not understand this very important point - the Reservation does NOT equal to the TICKET. You need to have a TICKET that match with the reservation you see, in order for you to fly that reservation. Truly surprised even on FT, there are still so many who dont realize this. Personally I have learned this from years ago during the UA outsourcing its reservation to India center where the reps often failed to reticket a change on the reservation. It was not until an NZ rep told me, "You may want to contact your travel agent to ticket this reservation. Right now you only have a reservation, but no ticket attached to it. You NEED that ticket to fly." That was after 3 changes on the reservation already, I did not get a single new ticket... Needless to say, from that point on I always always make sure to receive new tickets upon any change on partner awards.

Your experience is exactly what I am afraid of. Worse, because our original flight was at 10am in the morning, the new flight we changed to is 5:30pm in the evening. I dont want to be at check in and be told we are a no show of our morning flight, therefore our subsequent MEL-LAX is automatically canceled! That would be nightmarish to call AS from SYD trying to get back the F seats on QF 93!

It should not take multiple attempts to get this corrected but I am grateful to finally get a great supervisor to go over the ticketing history and quickly found the mishap, proceeded to fix it right away.

Stivelio

I'm hoping that this is not considered as a rudimentary question. Is it possible to book book economy saver ticket for DFW -MEL on QF using Alaska miles and then upgrade the ticket to premium economy with cash?

Mwenenzi

Generally no. QF are not know for offering upgrades for cash at check-in.
And the DFW-SYD PE/business class is popular for paying passengers & QF upgrades & QF/OW/ff partner awards

You can only upgrade QF flights with money(full fare difference) or QF ff points or bid upgrade if offered ( https://www.qantas.com/travel/airlin...rade/global/en.) Bid upgrade is QF points & cash.
QF points upgrade are far from certain: referred to as "QF upgrade lottery" .

Stivelio

Thanks. Do you think it's possible to survive dfw->Syd non-stop in QF with 7 and 2 yr old?

Mwenenzi

100's survive, down the back, on that flight every day
The chances of 3 (or 4?) upgrade offers is low.
QF will fly with empty premium seats.
Enjoy the flight. ^

PV_Premier

Mwenenzi

Its leaves late at night and arrives early morning, so it is a ~16 hour all night flight in the dark.
Crew will darken the cabin to subdue the pax (and reduce their work load)

Anyway from another post by Stivelio is still looking for 4 awards USA Australia.

Kremmen

I'm looking at booking SYD-SFO next year. QF shows availability most days of the week I'm looking at. BA shows the same availability in business class. Up to 4 seats some days. (QF also shows some MEL-SFO that BA doesn't see.) AS agent can't see any of it.

Any suggests as to how much availability QF needs to have before AS gets any? Apparently 4 is insufficient.

Stivelio

I was able to book 4 QF prem econ seats from SFO-MEL. I'm all set. Thank you all for the suggestions

CDKing

AS agents cannot see anything that is not on the AS website for Qantas. QF site will show seats that are only available to QF members. How far in advance are you looking? Awards on QF are not being made available to AS at 330 days, its a much smaller booking window for QF TPAC. Mid-June is currently the latest right now on AS site for QF. I know it was worse not too long ago.