I'm planning a trip that would include me taking a companion along on a JFK-SYD route. I would be flying on a D fare (DONE4) and my companion would be there on an award. It is my understanding that awards on this route are virtually impossible to come by.

So, I have a few questions:

Are the D seats easy to come by on this route?

Would I be better of restructuring my trip and burning my NA transcon segment on JFK-LAX and then going into MEL or perhaps even AKL and doing New Zealand first due to easier award availability?

Should I instead look at using the Asia tarnsit without stopover rule for my DONE4 (I'm coming back to Asia later) and go via NRT or HKG for better award availability?

Any advice would be appreciate. And while we're at it, does anyone know if I can use the availability tool to see award inventory on QF or CX, and what those codes would be?

AFAIK none of the free availability tools show award inventory.

ExpertFlyer, a paid site, shows award availability for QF (among others), but not for CX (ditto).

For someone without QF status, yes, it is very hard.


In general terms, yes. If you give me a date range I can look it up for you.


I think you will find some OW airlines, including AA, will not allow this routing under the 'transit without stopover' rule (search this forum for recent posts on this topic).

True, but I am currently in the process of ticketing a DONE4 as (simplified)
TPE-(x)HKG-SYD-(x)HKG-LHR-JFK-(x)HKG-CEB-HKG-TPE
which CX has confirmed they are happy with as an itinerary even though the transit in HKG between SYD and LHR is not "first available flight". I suspect CX would be happy to do the same for, for example:
TPE-(x)HKG-SYD-(x)HKG-JFK-LHR-(x)HKG-CEB-HKG-TPE

Slightly OT here, but the KVS tool does show the D bucket for KLM, which corresponds to business class award inventory. Worked for me in the past; who know what'll happen when Flying Poo takes over.

I would look at all the options such as JFK-SYD, LAX-SYD, LAX-MEL, LAX-BNE, LAX-AKL-SYD/MEL/BNE, LAX/ORD/DFW-HNL-SYD

You could do, but you will then be paying for 2 awards US-Asia and Asia-South Pacific

Business class is hard to come by, but if you check all the possibilities your chances increase

If using expertflyer to check availability, do be aware that it is not completely reliable for checking Qantas availability

Dave

[KVS Availability Tool] does show QF award availability

[QUOTE=Viajero]For someone without QF status, yes, it is very hard.


Viajero, what do you think of a BA Gold's odds of landing an award seat in F on that route?

Thank you,

P

I am not qualified to answer, but I think the chances are slim, for two reasons, widely reported in FT:

(a) QF releases only a mere handful of J/F award seats across the Pacific, its most profitable route, I believe.
(b) QF makes these few award seats available to its own elites well before the rest of us ever see them, by which time they are usually gone.

This is as I know the situation from an AA POV, I suspect it is the same for all other non-QF FFPs but I really don't know.

Boy, did it come handy in booking my trip.

For anyone interested, I was able to get an award reservation on hold. Here's my unscientific results:

JFK-SYD -- forget about it
LAX-SYD -- almost forget about it (I was able to snatch one seat, but on the "day" flight)
LAX-MEL -- forget about it
LAX-BNE -- forget about it
LAX-AKL -- forget about it
HNL-SYD -- ^ I saw lots of availability

I should note that I was checking for March/April of 2006.

Finding J and F availability on QF long-haul flight in the next 12 months is going to be tough. The QF program undergoes a restructure on May 25th, when the points required to redeem premium cabin awards is going up dramatically in most cases. So the QF FF members have been caching in their saved FF points on the business and first class awards that are going up in cost. As a result, there is very little availability for QF premium cabin awards left right now.

However, this might be very different for awards from May 06 onwards, since they will cost a very large number of points for QF members to redeem and most that have decent points balance available have already made their premium cabin award bookings before May 25th 2005.

This brings back memories from 2003 when AA enhanced (increased) the number of miles required to claim all types of awards. However, with a moderate amount of friendly persistence to AA reservations, I was able to redeem 2 biz class awards over Easter 2004 with the following routing: GCM-MIA-LAX-SYD-AKL-LAX-MIA-GCM. These were ticketed at the end of July 2003 for 105k miles each (ah, the good ole days!).

But it is true that premium award availability on QF trans-pac has always been difficult except for very last minute bookings. Regrettably, it now appears to be even more of an issue for the reasons that NM has stated as well as the number of premium seats declined in biz when the SkyBed product was introduced.

It is possible these changes will result in greater award availabily at the expense of upgrades.

Currently, when an upgrade to business class is requested, the award U class is checked. If there is any availabilty, the PAX is booked into that U class seat and the availabilty reduces. If there is no availability, the PAX can be placed upon a waitlist.

If yield management decide to realease further business award seats U class availability increases. At this point, any waitlisted upgrades (if any) are processed, reducing the award availability.

Normally, waitlisted upgrade demand exceeds supply and effectively, no business class award seats become available.

If I understand things correctly, the changes coming this month will result in those award seats actually being available for award bookings, rather than being gobbled up by upgrades.

Any upgrades will then occur subject to seat availability and "Yield Management" philosophies just before checkin.

Re: Award seats on #QF107/108 - a bit off topic - but here's my story...........

I guess I was just (dumb) lucky! Booked on a April 2006 (cruise) and needed LAX/SYD (Bus. Cl.) o/w only.
I was looking for specific date - but when (2) Bus. Cl. Seats QF#108 came available for 4 days prior to my date - I grabbed them! (I Used 80,000 BA miles for each award ticket!)

I will ticket a needed "connecting" Domestic rt. Coach Award separately as soon as return "inventory" comes available as the trip is over 5 weeks - (I've got the "outbound" on HOLD w/Delta - other airlines would not HOLD the outbound leg for the needed return date! )

Guess I'll just "suffer" through the week (instead of 3 days) in Sydney

Wishing Good luck to others - I know there wil be many trying for Award seats to Sydney for this ( Diamond Princess w/2,700 passengers ) cruise!