oneworld round the world tickets, bought online, ticketed on Qantas
 

Just wanted to share a frustration and warning to others. RTW OW BUYERS BEWARE.

After several attempts trying to book a oneworld RTW fare via BA (would be sent to their back office for pricing, but by the time it came back the flights had been cancelled out of the booking, requiring you to try all over again, and then the same result…) I finally took the plunge and booked direct exactly what I wanted on the oneworld website. The booking was immediate and for exactly the flights and dates I wanted. The fare was as expected too. Positive start!

A few days later, I wanted to make a date change (which are stated in the rules as free provided same fare class is available - a key feature given ticket is valid for up to one year) so I phoned BA.

Only to be told by BA that they couldn’t help as the ticket - paid for by a Brit, in the UK, in GBP, originating and ending in London, with a BA EC number given at the time of booking - was ticketed by Qantas.

There was no warning of this at the time of booking. In fact in my confirmation email that came through once I had paid (all branded oneworld) - only had one small reference that it was a Qantas ticket and to contact them for customer service. Good luck!

From here on it has been a series of really difficult phone calls - at antisocial times given timezone differences - to get through to Qantas reservations who have little to no clue on how these tickets work and how changes can be processed. Being without Qantas FF status - and no way to have my BA / OW status recognised over the phone - I think compounded the difficulty to get through to an experienced or suitably tenacious agent willing to tackle the complexities of these fares.

It’s a real shame that the customer service from oneworld is non-existent and Qantas is terrible - as these are great fares / tickets that should provide a lot of value and flexibility, and showcase the power of the alliance.

Also worth noting that baggage allowances, lounge access and seat reservation standards vary a lot across alliance airlines. I have BA, AA, FJ, QF, MH and AY on this booking and every single one applies different rules, despite being on one booking.

I'm guessing it ticketed on QF as they are perhaps the most significant carrier, maybe for your outbound journey?

There is a whole sub-forum on RTW fares over on the oneworld section of the forum so there should be some tips there on best ways to book and manage. I agree QF's customer service is poor. Wait times can vary depending on when you call and if more than one call centre is open. They do at least have a toll free number you can use on skype.

Yes the guide / thread here is good for those in need - wish I’d found it beforehand:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onew...ser-guide.html

Unclear to me why it was ticketed Qantas - precedent used to be that the opening leg airline was the ticketing carrier which makes sense to me. But reading the RTW OW FAQ, apparently OW route the direct business to QF regardless now.

So avoid booking via the OW website to avoid the pain of having to deal with QF.

Or use a travel agent who can process the changes for you.

No idea about their knowledge of RTW tickets, but in terms of timezone, qantas is available 24x7 on their uk number.

https://www.qantas.com/au/en/support/contact-us.html

Doesn't the ticketing carrier always have control over the ticket, at least prior to departure? I don't think it would be any different if you went to a travel agent.

Qantas's call centres are also open around the clock in Australia.

Qantas has a 24 hour phone service. If you were phoning from UK to an AU phone during "normal business hours" for say 08:00 ~ 17:00 Sydney/Melbourne time was a bit of waste. Australia has several time zones. Currently 3hrs time difference SYD/MEL to PER (in the west)

My understanding QF operate phone call centres in Hobart (Tasmania), Auckland (New Zealand), Fiji, Philippines and South Africa. The HBA takes calls from QF top tier freq flyers. They are the most skilful, but a good margin. Others get distributed down the line. You may have been talking to someone working unsociable hours in their home country. During CV19 most~many non AU QF phone agents (sub contractors) lost there jobs. The new hires are poorly trained and less skilful. Some can make appalling mistakes (many threads on AFF). A common fault is QF not re-ticketing schedule/route changes in time on non QF airlines, so the ticket auto cancels. Anything complex can be a challenge. QF really need a RTW *ONE* and QF Oneworld award dedicated team who understand these more complex tickets.

Baggage allowance will be as the ticket. For status can be additional bags.

OW has a status benefit of "preferred seating". But every airline has a different definition. The only that airline I have seen publish this "preferred seating" is CX. Others is by guess work-deduction. The BA policy is 1 of the hardest, even on business class. That is unless mid top OW status pay $$ for a business class seat allocation. Many non BA freq flyers do not like it. But been that policy for many years.

Lounge access is by class of travel & status. Qatar QR has limited access in DOH to some lounges depending on the rules. The new lounges in NYC have limited access.

Your OW status is not part of a *ONE* ticket. You will/should get the status benefits as applicable on the day. Many people get higher status on these *ONE* trips.

Interesting comments on BA?

When I paid for my DONE5 recently, they were able to reinstate the dropped flights there and then and take payment without any further referral to the back office, I assume as the flights and airlines had not changed?

Seems these reports of the OW tool ticketing with QF when it would otherwise appear to be BA are becoming more common. I have to wonder if the only reliable way to get ticketed by someone else from the tool is to have CX or JL as your first carrier. I'm pretty certain RJ and AT also kick the ticketing over to QF.

OP, I dealt with a QF ticket and frankly it was horrible trying to get anything done. Eventually I stopped using the call center entirely and just made my modifications with the Twitter team via DM. I don't know that's still an option now with X and their ridiculous paid "verified account" service to DM people who don't follow you. But I believe the same team also has Facebook Messenger, I recall another poster mentioning that last year.

Hard agree. Avoid ticketing via Qantas.
For a recent Done3 ex-Tokyo, I used the OW ticketing tool. My first flight was on JAL and it gave the option of calling JAL to confirm and ticket it, or completing the transaction online and ticket on Qantas stock.
For clarity, no QF flight in my routing but I took the QF option and regretted my decision. Dealing with I ncompetent/untrained call center in Philippines unable to amend/reissue ticket for a date change after 1 hour on the phone, and cancelling my reservation midway through travel. I only found out about cancellation because I called to request a further change.
I was routed to the S African call center who then told me changes weren’t possible “as I’d started my journey” even though clearly permitted under the rules for 125USD. Another hour on the phone requiring a callback as in their words “it was taking too long” before I was able to resolve problem that they created.

Thanks for this tip. It is possible to message Qantas on X without being "verified" (I just did). I got a very fast response and the agent seemed orders of magnitude more knowledgeable than the agents I got on the phone. They first told me to call, but when I told them (politely) that phone agents were being useless, they were able to help, although in the end I didn't make any changes.

Yeah, I don't even both with the call center anymore, and told the Twitter team exactly the same, so they're willing to help and they know what they're doing.

I just booked an ex-CAI and went through a good bit of back and forth on a bunch of changes post-booking, but they got it done. The only quirk I found was their system won't allow 2 stopovers in the same city (though you can book them on the OW tool and ticket with QF), and their system thinks that CAI and TUN are Africa instead of Europe, so was unable to add TUN with a stopover there, it was no longer pricing as a DONEx according to the agent. I didn't push too hard on that and just added South America instead which will net me more miles than TUN would have, but TUN would have allowed me to build in a cheap RJ fare to Asia. I'll have to figure out something else to get home at the end of this one but suspect there will still be some decent ex-CAI fares then as that's been going on for many years.

I had a similar issue with my last DONE5 where Qantas argued Morocco was in Africa. Yes, it is, but not when it comes to the overly complicated oneworld Explorer rules.

The good thing is we know this now and can more efficiently deal with QF issued tickets. Once we know their quirks it's easier to plan around them in the future, since it seems they are ticketing the vast majority of RTWs now ex-anywhere using the OW tool.

The problem with ex-CAI is that you are limited to 4x segments and 2x stopovers in Europe / ME and since you're forced to put one of CAI-AMM, CMN, MAD, or LHR onto the ticket if using the tool, it eats up one of those segments,and if you're trying to go CAI-Asia it also eats up a stopover in the tool because it won't allow CAI to Asia due to QR restrictions, so you have to force it via AMM...(though it's not, it's a connection, the tool doesn't recognize that since you have to manually force it). The only way to remedy that is to have QF change the ticket later but then their system insists you have too many "Africa" segments / stopovers.

I guess I could have tried CAI-BKK and it would have likely given me RJ but didn't think of that... I'd have still been out the $125 change fee since I wanted CGK but at least I could have had the TUN stop I actually wanted since it would have already been ticketed.

Sorry to resurrect a thread. I have had the same problem as the OP. I was driven to use the OW tool when the first flight was BA (and the long HND-LHR at that) and the only QR flights were two short trans-Tasman hops towards the end. Weird. I am about the try to make a simple date change on one leg. Wish me luck :)

ETA: may I ask if there are any actual physical places in Sydney or Canberra where I do that really old fashioned thing and speak to a human about this?

Qantas hasn't had physical offices in Australian cities for years, unfortunately.