Impossible to cross the South Pacific on a OWE!
 

OK, so I know that's not theoretically true, but...

I'm in the middle of an Open LONE4 RTW and was originally planning on flying AKL-PPT on Air New Zealand (using reward points) (This is a 'surface' sector on my RTW and then PPT-IPC, IPC-SCL to get to South America. However, I seem to be running into all sorts of difficulties getting the reward flight (and a one way is about 700 pounds!) so was looking at changing the ticket to fly AKL-SCL on LA/QF. at the beginning of September. However, when I check the availability for L class for both the Qantas flight number and the LanChile, it comes up as zero every single time for every date. Does this mean in reality it's impossible to fly this route on a LONE4?

What other options are open to me? Can I upgrade to a different economy class eg M, or Business Class?


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Manta

Lan Chile is notorious for zeroing out the OWE fare classes (A/D/L) on some flights, even when there are lots of empty seats. The inventory is available "on request" ... this means your travel agent must send Lan Chile a message and they will then release an L seat for you on a specific flight. The AA RTW desk is quite good at doing this. Otherwise LA will release the seats close to the flight date, but not in advance. A really despicable practice, but one that is spreading (I ran into it on a flight that was 100% empty -- not a single seat had been sold yet but inventory was 0!!!!).