A QF - RTW Question
 

Greetings:

I am planning a DONE4 from the US. I have business stops in TLV and FCO, so the plan is the following:

JFK-LHR, LHR-TLV || TLV-LHR, LHR-FCO || FCO-LHR, LHR-SIN || SIN-PER || PER-MEL || MEL-AKL || AKL-SYD, SYD-JFK

From AKl, I will go back to SYD to get the QF flight to JFK rather than changing to AA in LAX. I may also add Hobart or some other destination in Australia if time permits.

My overall objective is to make the two stops in Europe and then visit parts of SWP that I haven't been to.

I am currently a lowly blue with BAEC. Can anyone help to answer the following questions? ( I can't find definitive answers on the QF web site).

1. Will I get lounge access for domestic QF flights?

2. If not, will BA silver get me lounge access for domestic QF flights?

3. If yes: As I calculate it, I'll only attain silver after the LHR-SIN leg. Will the QF gatekeepers be able to verify this without a card?

Thanks in advance for any help.

If you're travelling Business Class on QF, yes you'll get lounge access within Australia.

Only when connecting to an international business or first segment. For purely domestic itineraries and flights paid business tickets do not get you access to the Qantas Club you have to join the club for that. Once you obtain OW Sappphire or Emerald status then you should have access based upon that status.

This is correct. The part where you say is not. It has to be an international itinerary. A RTW is almost by definition an international itinerary, so you get QP access on flights that are part of the RTW ticket.

Also, if you fly QF AKL-LAX then you can connect to the QF LAX-JFK flight. This is allowed. What's not allowed is to fly into LAX on anything other than a QF flight number (so you can't use the AA codeshare flight), or to stopover in LAX. You have to go international flight-(QF)-LAX-(QF)-JFK with no stopover in LAX, or vice versa. See the discussion at the end of this thread http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...ighlight=QF107.

The reason I lurk (and try to contribute) to Flyertalk is gems like this. Flying from AKL (rather than SYD) simplifies things for me AND I get QF metal to JFK AND I get an additional 120 BA tier points because the AKL-JFK will be two segments instead of the single SYD-JFK segment. Trifetca! Thanks Yellow77!

Oh well. AKL-LAX arrives LAX at 10:30. QF107 departs for JFK at 8:50.

That's why I mentioned purely domestic itineraries in my second sentence as certainly your argument can be made and it worked for me once. But just last december I was refused access to the QC while on domestic J flights in Oz that were ticketed as part of an AONE but the flights were not connecting to or from an international flight. Others have had similar results. Others have been allowed access. Dave Noble says it depends on whether your itinerary starts in Oz or not. Often it depends upon the person standing guard at the lounge

Unless I'm mistaken the thread you cite to talks about access to the AC and FL not the QC and I think actually supports my position. If you are flying A class on an AA domestic flight you do not get access to the AC or FL unless you are connecting to an international segment (unless your access is through status or QC membership).

Think of it as a free 22 hour "stopover"! (Note technically its only a transit.)

Point taken on the first one. Sounds like it's YMMV. The citation was for the sake of the LAX-JFK rules, not the QC/AC/FL access rules.

And if you just want extra tier points, and have the flight coupons, you could always fly AKL-SYD/BNE/MEL-LAX-JFK, just making sure to avoid QF107 from SYD-LAX. That's even better for tier points than AKL-LAX-JFK.

Well, if that's the thread that's been bandied about recently, it gives one unhappy example, and the traveler didn't seem to be using an xONEx ticket. Over the past couple of years people who generally seem to know these things have mentioned here that QF107 can always be included as an OWE segment, but I don't know if they were speaking from experience or merely authority. In any case it depends on the whim of the QF check-in agent, and QF doesn't seem to go out of it way to instruct its staff to be charitable imho.

None of that matters to the OP - QF in, QF out has not been disputed in anything I've read. (Nor have I seen anything that suggests that an intervening stopover is disallowed. If QF or the U.S. government was seriously against that, QF would probably schedule it as a technical stop.)

A year ago we included a bunch of QF segments on an AONE4 and invariably were welcomed in their lounges as available - never so much as a raised eyebrow.

QF seems to have changed the rules recently for LAX-JFK-LAX ticketing, requiring connection onto a QF service. This is a commercial decision by QF, no doubt due to the heavy loads they have been having so they can pick and choose. Prior to this it was possible to book QF 107/108 cabotaged on any international ticket (and have done so). I'm not aware of any US DOT finding that may have changed the interpretation of US law in this matter; it does seem to be just policy by QF to limit these scarce seats in order to maximize QF revenue.

Also note that QF107 is NOT daily!

And the AA LAX-(DFW or ORD)-JFK would get FIRST class tier points rather than Business - assuming that there is such a difference in the BA program. The others here will have to comment on that

Have fun....

WF