taz22456

Booked Avios business class seat for family of 4 going out FRA on 20 October using 320k avios + taxes with QR and connecting via DOH. This is specifically for Oct half term and using the avios so that we can experience the qsuites on either or both legs.
Made the booking back in Nov and since then, in Dec'23 they changed the DOH to HND leg from QR to JAL which to be honest i wasnt that bothered at all and communicated that going forward QR will only fly to NRT only for Tokyo.
Last week I receive notification from QR and BA that the booking has been completely cancelled and without offering any alternative flights- I was completely shocked by this and have never experienced this before.
I have booked a positioning flight with BA from LHR to FRA for the morning of the 20th just to to connect to the QR flight - and will incur amendment / cancellation charges.
I have spent numerous hours with the Avios team and they have raised a number of specific requests to the One World team to request QR to approve alternative flights. They outright denied the request without any clear explanation.
I have a seperate booking with Sri Lankan airlines to return to LHR from HND (vis SIN/CMB) for the 4th Nov. This trip has been in planning for over 2 years and we really want to make this trip as memorable as possible.
Whilst i understand that BA has limited avios seats allocated from QR; they are not providing any solutions other than a outright cancellation which i would like to avoid.
Would appreciate your advice on this - thank you.

1Aturnleft

It's quite normal for QR to play around with their schedules and aircraft types several times during the course of a year so I'm guessing this won't be the last significant change to your itinerary. When this happened to me last year (also Frankfurt) the flight initially disappeared but a few weeks later was reintroduced with a different flight number at pretty much the same times as the original that I'd booked and that had been 'cancelled'... so it may play out similarly to you if you're prepared to to sit tight and wait.

I know on cash tickets QR allow a rebook within 500 miles of origin when a flight is cancelled. 500 miles encompasses London Heathrow and this worked to my advantage when this happened to my trip, however I'm not sure this will apply to Avios redemption tickets. Might be worth asking BAEC and finding out whether that's an option available to you. They are right in what they tell you that there does need to be Avios availability for a flight change to be made, especially so far out from travel date. I suspect as it's a BA issued ticket in this case full QR rules won't apply but it's definitely worth asking.

When my flight cancelled (QR cash fare) I opted to swap FRA-DOH to LHR-DOH which suited me perfectly. A couple of weeks later the FRA-DOH was reintroduced. I wouldn't have been eligible to swap it back even had I wanted to as I'd already made my choice however I'd taken full advantage of the cancellation and rebook policy to make the trip better so it wasn't of interest when the flight did come back.

I had also booked the separate positioning flight (LHR-FRA BA cash fare). I initially played the waiting game hoping BA would cancel the service which would allow for a refund. When 2 weeks out from travel date this hadn't happend, I just ended up just rebooking LHR-FRA to a different Euro destination for a different holiday by paying the change fee and fare difference.

In hindsight I should have secured this LHR-FRA journey as an Avios redemption due to the flexible cancellation policy.

You live and learn.

nufnuf77

BA should offer to rebook you on FRA-LHR-HND on ba service in same class of service.

etiene

I had similar on a multi-partner reward when QR handed over one of their KUL rotations to MH. Spoke to BAEC but they couldn't do much as QR hadn't provided any guidelines on booking reward seats over to the MH flight. The issue is that you now need JL award space, which they presumably haven't released. Worth looking because JAL are normally pretty good at releasing space, but I don't know what they do with a new flight dropped into the schedule and I'm guessing their habit of opening more near to departure won't suit your plans.

BA opening space on their own flights shouldn't be out of the question since they can actually service this route, but I wouldn't be surprised if they take more of a "that's the risk with partner redemptions" approach.

sammyg901

Best to push BA to reroute you on BA metal. Someone on HFP forum got them to do this due to the same issue

Edit to add:The other thing to say is you do have rerouting rights here under EU261 but enforcing those may require you to front up new tickets and then pursuing QR for the reimbursement may not be simple. I would push BA as above

taz22456

Thank you everyone for your valuable input - I will continue to persist to push BAEC to reroute me on an alternative flight rather than triggering the refund route.

scottishpoet

I would not recommend booking specific flights so you can try qsuites. QR do a lot of changing. You cannot be sure of qsuites on fra doh until the aircraft is on its way to FRA.

My last DOH JNB changed between qsuites and not qsuites multiple times in the 2 weeks before departure

David buick

My reward flight has been cancelled ! (2 passengers on J)

Originally HND-DOH-BRU on QR

Then HND-DOH leg changed to JL in December

And yesterday the whole journey was cancelled.

Tried to rebook on the phone but nothing was available, so only option was a refund.

Did check by myself and find that I could do ITM-HND-DOH with HND-DOH on the plane previously booked and DOH-BRU also on the same plane for the same day.

But for 120.000 Avios more and 700� more.

HND-BRU wasn't available...

Didn't bother and asked for a refund as I fond a reward flight with LH KIX-BRU 2 days later.

But what could be the cause of this disruption ? The change from QR to JL on the HND-DOH leg ? as tax was only 120 � for HND-BRU

Traveller 935

Have a look at where someone else had the exact same problem with a QR award flight.