Unicorn captured? (Two QF DFW-SYD F award tix on hold)
 

I just put on hold 2 F AWARD tickets DFW - SYD. Even though I didn't have the miles they system let me put it on hold. Any reason to believe this is anything but a real reservation? I called AA and even got them to assign me the 2 F seats on Qantas. So what do you think? Any reason to worry about transferring my points to AA and then having the flight not be valid?
Thanks

Why would a QF award not be valid? (I’ve secured a number of transpacific AA award seats on QF and haven’t had any issues, nor have I seen many reported here.)

IMO your biggest challenge is acquiring the necessary miles in time to not lose your award seats.

Since I didn't have the miles a the time of booking and the Agent was surprised that I could put it on hold, I was wondering if there might have been a "glitch" somewhere that might have caused something that was not normal to be allowed.

And as to the second part of your post, any idea if AA ever lets a hold be extended?
Thanks

Nothing surprising about being able to put them on hold despite not having the mileage

The only way to extend time before payment would be to cancel and hope that you can rebook

Interesting, I know that with CX they do not guarantee holds on partner carriers only on their own metal. Is that not the case for AA? Useful to know when next making a redemption through transferrable credit card points.

Untrue. If it's a connecting itinerary, you can change a connecting segment and reset the hold timer.

I think this might be dependent on the airline. I have been burned by LATAM in particular. I had an award on hold, completely changed my routing a couple of days later (including all of the LATAM segments), the agent told me I had another 5 days to ticket, but when I called in to ticket I discovered LATAM had cancelled the LATAM segments on the day the original 5-day hold expired. Lesson learned: at least with LATAM, make sure the agent starts a new reservation instead of merely changing the existing one.

In my experience, QF doesn't have a reputation for cancelling holds before the 5 days are up or because the pax doesn't have the miles in their account when placing the flights on hold. So in this case, I wouldn't worry about the award being cancelled before 5 days have passed.

FYI -

DFW-SYD availability is not common, but it’s not uncommon either. Flew it twice in past 2 years on awards.

OT, but just out of curiousity, I requested 4F tickets, PIT-SYD (my home airport), for random days in February.

Many days, most with several flight options. Is this uncommon?

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8102e7a2b3.jpg

If the trans-pacific leg of those are actually in F I'll eat my hat.

And that’s the rub. AA is happy to extract high miles and seat you in Economy on the long sector. In some other venues that would be bait and switch and subject to sanctions or legal barriers. Not in the airline sector, and AA has the ethics of... well, use your imagination.. on awards.

At least we know the OP isn’t dealing with that, as F seats were available for selection.

Yup. Just today I was searching SFO-SYD awards. F "availability" similarly lit up on the calendar, but in every case it was F on SFO-LAX, Y on LAX-SYD :rolleyes: