Oneworld Award ticket routing question
 

Hi guys,

I'm in the process of booking a Oneworld return ticket in J with the following itinerary:

05/12/15 QF922 SYD-CNS
05/12/15 CX146 CNS-HKG
06/12/15 CX233 HKG-MXP
20/12/15 BA555 FCO-LHR
06/01/16 BA423 AMS-LHR
06/01/16 MH3 LHR-KUL
07/01/16 MH141 KUL-SYD

Is this a valid itinerary? I've had to do flights such as Syd-Hkg via Cns due to availability issues on direct flights from Syd.

My main needs are that I:
-Get into MXP on 06/12
-Leave FCO on 20/12
-Leave AMS on 06/12
-Arrive back in Sydney on 08/01

I am in the process of booking this with Asia Miles at the moment, however I keep getting push back on the number of transits I have, and they keep trying to push out the dates of my flights back to Syd so that there are more stop overs and less transits.

My understanding is that stopovers can be used as transits if you use up your 2 transits?

Please help with this question, as well if any one has ideas for alternative routing I'd be interested to hear them. I would prefer to fly CX, BA or QF back to Syd than MH but MH is the only one I could see with availability these days.

Update: The lady who was helping book my flights at AM (Manilla call centre I think) came back to me after I requested she check with the ticketing department about using the stopover allowance as transits if the max number of transits are used.

She said that it was not possible, what am I doing wrong??

Also I got a quote on my taxes from her... $7565HKD! What changes can I make to my itinerary to bring this down a little, it seems extraordinarily high!

Thanks in advance FTers :)

SYD-(QF)xCNS-(CX)xHKG-(CX)MXP//FCO-(BA)LHR//AMS-(BA)LHR-(MH)xKUL-(MH)SYD

Yes you can cannibalise your five stopovers as transits. According the the way I've written it out above you haven't exceeded the five stopover two transit two open jaw OW rule.

Using open jaws to backtrack somewhere twice may cause MPO systems to stuff up to the extent no agent may let you ticket. I've asked another FTer to see if this itin is the same as a problem he recently faced, see if he responds (he's away ATM).

Thanks Percysmith for your advice :). I'm on hold waiting to speak to someone else there to see if I can get a different answer.

Alternatively, has anyone had experience with having a booking ticketed so that it satisfies the call centre people and then changing the dates of flights later to better suit needs?

your itinerary looks ok with me. do tell them that you can convert a stopover into a transit.

change the stopovers to transits - but I think they have to charge the airport taxes/fees as a "stopover" rather than a "transit". this may inflate your taxes.

LHR has very high APD - avoid LHR stopover if you can, and tell them to use your LHR transit as a real transit and not a "stopover" that you have converted into a transit.

changing dates requires a fee of US$25 per sector - and is subject to availability.

Your routing looks valid to me as well.
AMS-HKG-KUL-SYD should be better than AMS-LHR-KUL-SYD if you want to avoid MH.

Not every agent knows/agrees that stopover can be used as transit - ask them to hold the itinerary (and the seats) and call again

Insist them send the itinerary to ticketing to assess the validity

Their CS can never get the tax right - the actual amount of tax can be quite different from what was quoted. In your case, it is quite likely that the agent has included the UK APD.

Sorry to bring this one up again, I need some advice!

I managed to get the above itinerary confirmed - I ended up just telling them to leave it and calling back up and speaking to someone new, telling them that I wanted to ticket my booking without mentioning the earlier issues i had run into.

I'm thinking now that I would prefer to fly CX all the way home from either AMS, LHR or CDG (and avoid MH and KUL). This would require waitlisting as these are booked out, but I'd expect at least one option would become available sooner to the date. My question is, can I waitlist these flights in a separate booking, and then upon them becoming available, if they are to come available, are CX able to swap out my MH LHR-KUL-SYD flights in my existing booking for the CX flights?

I only have the 160,000 points available so it needs to be in the one booking for the same points bracket to apply.

Thanks!

All waitlists must be in the same booking. You can't waitlist on another PNR and then merge it with your existing reservation.

Ahh ok, so I'm guessing then it's not possible as the flights with MH are confirmed and ticketed and so this wouldn't allow for me to have waitlisted flights with CX with the view to cancel the MH flights if the CX ones come through?

You can ticket it, waitlist in the same booking and pay the reissue fee (we, or even CSs, are unclear as to whether USD100 or USD120 is to be charged in this case) when the flight is available before your 1st segment

The chance that seat will be released 1 months in advance is less than 50% thought - more seats will be available at around 1 week before departure.