Latest update from QF: "I have some good news for you Mr TB"
 

Good news: The situation with QF is now resolved, as follows:

The QF Premium agent I had been dealing with did eventually call back a couple of times yesterday afternoon and evening. On the first occasion it was simply to reiterate that stopover at point of origin was not allowed. He had done some further research, blah blah blah...

I then thanked him for his persistence, and related my story with respect to booking the same itinerary on AA, with absolutely no problem for stopover at POO. We were about to conclude our business when he suggested that if he could access my AA booking he may be able to understand how it was possible, etc. With some trepidation, I gave him my PNR, but did not expect to hear back from him.

A few hours later, he called back, saying he had some good news. He and a supervisor had eventually spoken to QF "Industry Sales", who after some discussion confirmed that POO stopovers are indeed allowed on a OWE itinerary, so I could go ahead and make my additional sector bookings. :D

I asked him for a point of reference for this but he could not provide one. He explained the earlier problems by saying that the Industry Sales people work general office hours and had been closed at the times I had made my previous enquiries, so could not be consulted... :rolleyes:

Anyhow, this is certainly good news for me, and hopefully some kind of reference point for the future.

Now my decision is whether to go ahead with the AA bookings (lower fuel fines, etc), or return to the QF booking, which would yield better QF FF points (on QF sectors).

Once again, thanks to all for your helpful advice and inputs. ^

Best,

tb

It should not make any difference who tickets the flight. QF points are all by your ff number & the flight number. Keep the $$ instead of giving it to QF.

Glad so see there was a positive result ^ It will help others

Yes, except...
 

You are correct, except:

The slight downside of the AA itinerary was that they could only confirm me on LA 800 on the trans-pacific sector (they had no availability for a QF 321 code-share seat on the same flight), and they also had no availability on the QF direct service NRT-MEL, so had to book me on CX via HKG (and WL me for the QF direct service). While the CX flight would add some SCs and additional points over the (baseline points for the) QF direct service, it also adds about 7 hrs to the journey (with a quick connect time in HKG but transit via ADL from HKG-MEL).

Also, if I buy via QF I will gain an additional 10 or 11k in QF FF bonus points for purchasing direct from them on my ANZ QF FF credit card.

So, all up a difference of about 20k FF points, as I figure it, but I am happy to be corrected.

tb

I had the same 'question' as Mwenenzi. The credit card bit I think I understand. On the flights themselves, this is presumably nothing to do with AA (or QF) and whether 'they' have availability - simply the fact that the D inventory was available when you made the reservation with QF but is not now available - it wouldn't make any difference whether you called AA, QF or CX. The question is, if you 'release' (i.e., cancel) your reservation made with QF, will the D inventory on those flights be released (so you could book it via AA)? That's always uncertain and presumably doesn't matter anyway if you're going with the QF reservation for the extra credit card points.

Definitely good news though that QF now 'understands' the stopover rules.

Ef ?
 

Looks like you need help from someone with www.expertflyer.com. Maybe www.seatcounter.com will show (I have not used)

Agreed x 2
 

Agreed, although I guess it may be stretching to claim that 'QF' now understands. I suppose the key take-away here is that if you are having trouble with QF rez refer the CSA to "Industry Sales" (and hope that they come up with the same response). I certainly believe that demonstrating that AA had no problem with my itinerary (and indicating that I was happy to pass my $10k or so to them...) inspired a bit more self-examination.

This is a common deal for ANZ bank issued "QF FF" Visa and DC cards here in Oz: I think you get 1 bonus FF point for every 1$ spent directly with QF, over and above other FF points earnt on monthly spend.

Agree also regarding the availability of D inventory, but I assume that there is absolutely no way to guarantee that any released inventory would come my way ~ too many uncontrolled variables, I suspect...

Thanks,

tb

AFAIK, absolutely correct. Cancelling a D inventory reservation certainly doesn't mean the available inventory automatically goes from Dx to Dx+1 (in this case, D0 to D1) .... would probably go from J0 to J1 but even that isn't certain, if they'd previously oversold the cabin.