Silly question, Is it possible to book a local Qantas flight using srilankan airlines flysmile points? I know they joined oneworld not too long ago and I have 100k points to use up but not sure how it all works?

Yes it should be but I suspect you will need to do it via the phone (the oneworld airlines are generally not great on having partner award availability online)

but you need to do it via the Sri Lankan Flysmile system, one which I don't know the ins and outs of.

anyone know how to select seats on UL? i have a booking and when i view it on the sri lankan website, if you click on meal/seat preferences it just takes you to the section where the flight info is.

OWE here; TIA!

Has anyone who is OneWorld Emerald flown UL in coach recently? Debating taking them for an India-SE Asia one-way trip soon in coach ... what's the experience like?

Sri Lankan to join oneworld
 

doing it on tuesday, will report back if that's soon enough

I've checked and got the same as you. It appears to be a bug, as a couple of weeks ago I selected seats without difficulty. On the other hand, it is now possible to enter oneworld frequent flyer numbers -- something I couldn't do last time I checked.

Something odd here. I too picked my seat for a flight in August a couple of weeks ago. rj.com seems to allow seat selection but tells me the entire cabin is full; expertflyer.com shows only two occupied seats and all others marked P for Premium only.

FWIW, UL's website is now letting me pick seats in MMB again.

Please do report, looking to book this week for a trip next month :)

so i just got off this flight and i'm afraid i have failed you.

when we went to board and got our bp's scanned the agent handed us new bp's; they upgraded us to business. Y was only 75-80% full so i'm assuming this was because i'm OWE. great move by UL as it definitely made the 3h30m flight go by so much quicker.

that said, on the a320s business class is similar to an asian short haul business:
- recliners in 2x2 setup; leather seats with no foot extension, maybe an 8" or so IFE system. headphones are very poor (i used my bose) - over ear and non-noise canceling. like they ones you'd get with a walkman back in 1992.
- pillow and blanket were on the seat waiting; blanket is of nice quality (certainly better than the fleece on AA). also, i dont know why i take note of this, but the hot towels they hand out are 1) actually hot, and 2) of much nicer quality than the rags on AA/BA/etc. they're maybe 40% larger, much thicker, have "srilankan" beveled in the center.
- meal consisted of salad, fruit, bread from basket, and choice of 4 different entrees (i had thai red curry chicken - was tasty). cashews were given as starter, drink menu has glenlivet. i have a pic of the menu but dont have an image hosting account so if anyone wants, PM me with your email address and i can send it.
- they had 14-16 new releases in the IFE (american hustle, frozen, 12 years a slave, etc) along with cinema from many other countries, tv shows, and music. was fine for a shorter flight; probably too little for a long haul (though i dont know if they have more variety on long hauls).
- service was very friendly and attentive. was an enjoyable flight.

they do an excellent job of keeping the curtain closed during the flight but since we were in the last row of J i was able to catch a couple things:
- seats are leather and looks pretty good for coach seats. cabin was clean.
- drinks and meal was served right after we leveled off.
- i *think* each seat had IFE. the guy in the first row of J had his screen out and was watching stuff so i'm assuming all of the other seats do (despite some of the reports i read on the web about UL's a320s).

that's about all i have. so i guess the main takeaways are:
1) Y experience looks just fine. certainly better than the two vietnam airlines flights we had taken right before.
2) as a OWE you have a chance at getting upgraded to J (we were on paid tickets).

hope this helps and let me know if you have any other questions.

now off to check-in for our EY "we hate you because you booked an error fare ticket and we're going to do everything we can to screw with you" itinerary.

Wow, that's awesome. Mind if I ask what route this was? I have an A320 segment as well ...

UL seems to have a bidding process for business class as well ... $75 for my A320 flight and $100 for my A330 connection seem to be the minimum bid.

this was sin-cmb; departure was around 3:05pm or something like that.

i also saw the bidding process stuff in our itinerary (they heavily promote it) and the minimum bid for our flight was $100 or $105. decided to pass as we didnt want to spend the cash and then low and behold we were upgraded. it doesn't seem like to many people jump at lfbu's the way they do in the US, so i'd guess that chances at winning with a minimum bid - or ebay style by doing the next increment up - would be pretty good.

UL in economy
 

I recently flew UL CMB-SIN - 07:20 a.m. flight

I looked at the upgrade bidding but it closed with no availability three or four days before the flight. I checked in via the transit desk after arrival on CX at about 22:30. After a bit of confusion, I was sent downstairs with two young men to identify my luggage. A relatively painless process as CX has always managed to get the luggage out quickly.

I then spent six hours in the transit hotel. I would best describe it as 4* from an earlier era. All in all, a quite comfortable room. A wake up call (unrequested) after 5.5 hours ensured that I did not "overstay". Very clean with double bed and all expected (though unused) bath extras.

The flight on an A320-200 boarded a few minutes late. J cabin was as full as expected, but I did not check for empty seats. The Y cabin was perhaps 50-60% full, with my airline provided seat choice (with three seats) in the row behind the exit rows. I took the window and a seat mover took the aisle after the seat belt sign was turned off. Maybe next time I will consider using MMB. Breakfast would be considered standard airline scrambled eggs, though the curried fish was the item being "pushed" by the FAs. Two carts were used - one from the front - one from the back. Taste acceptable, portions a bit smaller than what I was served for breakfast by QF in Y the next day. Arrival into SIN T3 was not dramatically late. Luggage delivery normal for SIN.

Price for the one way ticket was a bit more than CX's red-eye flight would have been - though that included a UL fare class boost to ensure full credit to the CX program. And hopefully the double miles for UL's entry into OW will appear shortly. And I avoided a 3.5 hour red-eye flight.;)

Happy wandering

Fred
Fred

Will flights booked as UL codeshare op by Mihin Lanka (MJ) count as op by a oneworld airline, i.e. will I get TPs and Avios for them? I know that Mihin Lanka is not exactly part of oneworld but since SriLankan is its parent company maybe the flights would still count as operated by oneworld.

Anyone practical experience for CMB-SEZ or CMB-CGK?

These flights can only be credited to UL's own FFP:

[KVS Availability Tool 7.3.8/Diamond - Timetable/NL]

Do you know if the CMB-SEZ route can be booked on a One World award ticket?

No it cannot

Only the airlines listed in rule 4(j) can be included
- fare rules are available on oneworld.com (expand 'terms and conditions' and click on the link to the fare rules at the bottom of the screen)

Thanks for the info. Also, I noticed you are based in PER. Do you know if the Air Mauritius PER-MRU flight can be booked on a Sky Team award or via any other FF program other than Air Mauritius?

Sorry I cannot help you there

WOW....
 

The airline had also “tried to hush up two serious flying mishaps,” the government said,

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...-state-airline

Does anyone know if it's possible now to book CBM-SEZ on any One World carrier's points (preferably BA or AA)&

BA apparently yes. AA as of 2 months or so ago still no. You can call AA and check if the problem they had is fixed yet though.

CMB-SEZ was originally on the UL partner (subsidiary) airline that was not considered part of OW.

Happy wandering

Fred

The CMB - SEZ flight used to be part of Mihin Lanka's network..Mihin Lanka doesn't exist anymore and all their flights have been added to Srilankan Airline's network and so should now be bookable as part of OW

Yes it should be but there was and probably still is a bug with AA on that route. UL was (still is?) not listed as an available carrier to/from SEZ.

I found this on BA.com

Read my post above that says that the route is fine for BA points.

Thanks everybody. Was anyone successful in booking (whether via BA or any other OW carrier) an award flight MLE-SEZ via CMB? If so, how many award miles did it cost (economy) and how bad were the taxes? I saw that either flight doesn't operate every day. If there is a long stopover in CMB (like 2-3 days) is it still considered one award flight or two separate ones?
Could award ticket MLE-CBM be booked through any OW carrier (especially AA) or, like SEZ-CMB, it could only be done via BA?

As long as UL has available award seats, theoretically any OW airline can ticket.

AA ticketing will certainly be an interesting exercise. Telephone requests will be required. I suspect that the 24 hour next flight rule will be enforced meaning that CMB-SEZ may require separate ticketing. As well it is still not (obviously) documented what travel xone SEZ will be part of. MRU is considered part of Africa. SEZ?? The difference would be in the cost. I believe CMB is considered part of the Indian sub-continent and Y award tickets within that area or to the Middle East would be 17.5K one way, but to Africa 30K.

So please call AA and ask in which zone SEZ is placed and let us know.

CX, BA and QF award ticketing are (?) mileage based and thus would be somewhat easier to estimate the (mileage) cost.

Happy wandering

Fred

IATA classifies the Seychelles as Area 2 (Europe/Mid-East/Africa), in the Indian Ocean Islands sub-area. This is the same sub-area as Mauritius, Comoros, Madagascar, Mayotte, and Réunion.

I would suspect that AA would go along with IATA's definition rather than create their own. That's because this is literally on the other side of the planet and the time taken to redraw their own areas would seem to me not commercially justified.


Yes: IATA classifies Sri Lanka as Area 3 (Asia/Pacific), in the South Asian Subcontinent sub-area. This sub-area also contains Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India (including the Andaman Islands), the Maldives, Nepal, and Pakistan.

AA does consider SEZ part of the Africa zone.

So it seems that for MLE-CMB-SEZ (or CMB-SEZ) award flight I am better off using BA's distance-based award miles than AA's region-based ones. Right?

Best to buy a revenue ticket. UL has insane fuel surcharge on Avios tickets.

Does it have same surcharge on AA's award tickets as well?

No, but revenue tickets are under US$ 500 in Y and US$ 850 in J for MLE-CMB-SEZ rt. vs 60k/110k AA miles respectively.

60K for $500 doesn't sound like a good redemption value. How bad are fuel surcharges on BA? Could it be better to use Iberia? Are there any other OW carriers that use distance-based award system and do not have crazy fuel surcharges on this route?

There's 50 USD in taxes and fees (departure tax H9 at 25 USD and airport fee BQ at 25 USD) plus 80 USD for the UL carrier surcharge.

BA has a silly system where they compute the revenue price and deduct only the fare, then pass the rest on as the taxes and fees for the award ticket. So you can see what the surcharges would be by looking at a revenue ticket on IATA Matrix.

On the flip side it's only 14500 Avios. I would consider paying 14500 Avios to save 370 USD to be a good deal.

I agree. Given that either flight doesn't go every day do you think it would be possible to squeeze in a few days stopover in Colombo while still keeping it a single award ticket?

Any chance there would be no fuel surcharge is the award ticket is booked with Iberia's avios, not BA's ones? I know it works in Europe and USA, but not sure about the rest of the world.

Quick question:

Flying Paris-LHR (BA) and connecting to Sri Lankan onto Colombo.

Since both are Oneworld can I check my bags in Paris all the way through to Colombo and get my Sri Lankan boarding pass in Paris too (to avoid having to clear customs in London)?