justin1123

Hi,

I am planning a LONE4 itinerary from LHR to include south america. Could anyone help with a couple of questions related to this:

- Is SCL-GYE a valid OWE flight? There seems to be a flight on fridays which is operated by LAN, but AA have refused to ticket this claiming it is really a codeshare.

- I am trying to fly SCL-AKL, but there appears to be no L availability from January 07 to mid March. I know this is a popular route but is there any way around this - waitlisting etc? The only other way I could see to fly was SCL-PPT and buy a separate ticket PPT-AKL. Are there any other options I have missed (trying to avoid North America to keep it to a 4 continent ticket)?

- Could anyone clarify the tax and surcharge issue when tickets are re-issued. I have read several posts on this, but couldn't tell whether a re-issue would cause the whole ticket to be re-quoted or just the remaining flights.

Thanks

Justin

Viajero

LA568 is a valid, direct, non-codeshare LAN flight.

christep

Assuming you mean a reissue for rerouting after you have commenced travel then the charges are US$125 reissue fee, plus the difference between the taxes and surcharges for the remaining flights you now wish to take priced at the date of reissue, less the taxes & surcharges previously paid for flights not taken at that point. Plus (if you get the reissue done by BA or QF) an additional charge of GBP25 or so for no good reason - think of it as extortion, because that's what it is when the contracted terms include a fee of US$125 for doing this work already.

They clearly don't attempt to retrospectively charge you higher taxes or surcharges on flights you have already taken! Moreover if you wanted to change the ticket from an LONE4 to an LONE5 mid-way then the difference payable would be the difference between those two tickets that pertained in the country where you bought the ticket at the time you originally bought it since those upgrade options form part of the original contract.

bensyd

Its always a popular route especially when the alternative is Aerolineas . Unfortunately you cannot waitlist, if there is no L availability they will not book the segment for you.

millionmiler

This is one of the routes well known to have very little availability for awards and RTW tickets.

Viajero

...and heavily overbooked in Y in summer, so if there is nothing now the chances of L becoming available later are practically nil.

bensyd

LA really should look at making this a daily service, or QF should restart their SYD-AKL-EZE service.

Kiwi Flyer

It is now (or soon?) 6 days a week. But really Jan to Mar is peak season.

BTW if north america is included on the itin, it is a LONE5 not 4. That may be your only way around the SCL-SYD/AKL non-availability. You could make it a LONE4 by not including SWP, and if you want to visit Australia/NZ take a separate ticket from Asia.

UserMark

You can waitlist QF322 which is the QF codeshare of the LA flight, but if it comes through you'd get fewer AA miles.

GibSpmuh

The other option depending on what routing you're taking is to look at the Global Explorer rather than the oneworld explorer. The Global Explorer lets you take the QF codeshares on TN so you can route via PPT though to AKL or SYD. The downside is it's mileage based, rather than continent based, which might not suit depending on your proposed routing.

QF NB

Kiwi Flyer

IIRC, LAN stated they wanted to fly to Australia daily, however, I believe that due to maintenance requirements (or another reason), they're unable to. I do remember reading somewhere that they wanted to have have daily services by NOV 06.

Regards

og

Are you sure? I have just had a DONEx ticket issued (by CX BKK) with a Europe to North America sector issued as Waitlist. For some reason, BA have zeroed out D at 9 months prior (Thursday). Flight is D9 on days either side. CX had no issue with ticketing a WL coupon.

Stewie Mac

We had the same problem (although we actually wanted to go to IPC and PPT) and got round it by cashing in some UA miles to get award tickets on NZ from PPT-BNE (via AKL) - r/t is 20,000 miles, and we just threw away the returns. Don't have any *A miles ? No problem - just take out a BMI fee-free credit card and they give you 20k miles as a signing-up bonus (how convenient is that ?). As a bonus, you can use that 20k miles to get to *anywhere* in Australasia or SWP and include a stopover in AKL. Only downside is that availability is tight on this route too for award tickets, but you can have a look at availability on the ANA tool (see *A forum or bmi forum for details).

have a great trip.

bensyd

I recall a while back trying to book a segment on a LONE5 iirc it was actually AKL-SCL, and there was zero availbility, at that time I had no idea about FT and was told that I could not be waitlisted, so I had to change to a couple of weeks later. My TA at the time said there was no availbility for quite a few days either side, so it may have been that he didn't think it wise to WL me if there was not a good chance of any availbility opening up, and so told me I couldn't be WL.