I agree with christep re the Qantas agent being wrong in the interpretation of a single flight on return to Australia. What if I start in GLT and my intercontinental return is to SYD - then I need SYD-BNE-GLT to finish and that is 2 sectors! This is clearly incorrect.

Following their incorrect interpretation would also mean you are only allowed one flight in North America, plus one flight to and from ANC, limiting all OWE fares to 3 NA segments! How does one get to Canada? (see restriction I in the same document).

However, I can understand them interpreting that you can only one of either BNE/CNS/SYD-PER, or MEL/SYD-DRW, and not one of each.

I also agree that wanting to connections in Asia for the first pass through and claiming it to be transit only is pushing beyond the intent of the rule. So I can understand them knocking you back on that one.

Yes, that is how the ticketing dept of travel.com.au is interpreting the rule, so I can only do 1 flight - eg SYP-PER, and not both SYD-PER, DRW-SYD.


Yup, they've knocked me back on that, but it's ok, I'll just switch my Singapore trip at the end of my international flights. However, it's disappointing that there's no flights from Australia that lets you transit in Singapore for close to 24 hours and catch the flight to Helsinki <bummer> I've only got 1 hour of transit in SIN now.

Here's my updated itinerary -

MEL-SIN
SIN-HEL
HEL-LHR
ORY-MAD
MAD-BCN
BCN-ORY
LHR-SFO
SFO-JFK
JFK-TPA
TPA-ORD
ORD-BOS
BOS-DCA
DCA-LGA
JFK-HKG
HKG-SIN
SIN-SYD
SYD-PER
PER-ADL
ADL-DRW
DRW-BNE

QF31 from SYD-SIN would fit the bill, getting in at 2:55am from November 1 (before daylight savings commences it's a 4:05am arrival). Given the SIN-HEL flight departs at 10:30pm that's about the best you'd find (and on the plus side I can assure you that you get out of the airport *very* quickly that time of the morning - not many people get off QF31 in SIN :D ).

Wow - that certainly fits the bill - however, since I'm Sydney based, I decided to start from Melbourne, because returning from overseas, my luggages will certainly be bursting, hence Sydney is my port of entry in Australia. If I start from Sydney, I wouldn't be able to go back to Sydney and then do the OZ legs to finish off the max 20 segments (I'm doing my OZ legs a couple of months after I return from overseas).