Dave Noble

If it is a paid ticket, you can cancel the whole booking and pay the 1 way fare. Looking at the fares, the one way base fares are about 65% of the roundtrip fares

Traveloguy

Just don't credit them to QF!

Supersonic Swinger

Hello AAdvantage!

timster

Yep .. totally apt.

It currently seems totally impossible to book SYD-BKK-LHR on the Qantas site (multi-city booking). It shows me available dates, lets me click on them, but then comes up with an error each time saying no flights on your chosen dates.

And the price shown for those dates is something ridiculous. Like $6000 for economy.

I never even get to see if the BKK-LHR leg is direct with BA (which I want), or BKK-DXB-LHR with EK (which I don't want).

If I go to Qantas' Thailand site and ask for BKK-LHR I get shown only the BA coded flights to LHR - but for a ridiculous amount of money and of course with the stupid restriction that Qantas BKK has always had - that I have to present my credit card at their office in central Bangkok within 2 days to claim the tickets !!

On top of that they have resheduled QF23 SYD-BKK from 1215 to a 0940 departure, making a connection into SYD from anywhere else very inconvenient.

So I guess they don't want pax flying to LHR via BKK. And they don't want anyone flying to BKK except from SYD.

All QF/BA flights SYD-BKK-LHR are still readily bookable on BA.com. But the flight times are those pre this week's time changes, so who knows if the flights will soon disappear from BA.COM altogether or just the times will get updated.

LOLABUNNY

I was stunned to read about Adelaide getting the chop on Nonstop services to Singapore.Not that It matters If I go Qantas I am happy to put up with waiting around at Melbourne or Sydney in either direction for a few hours or I fly Singapore Airlines.I was expecting maybe downsizing to 737-800's could have saved this sector from the axe considering there are some people who refuse to fly through Dubai to Europe and will instead be connecting onto Finnair via Helsinki to their final destination.All I hope is they don't give this route to Jetstar on the A330-200'S.

Dave Noble

It is quite feasible to connect at that time from BNE,CBR,MEL and ADL which covers a lot of potential passengers

Dave Noble

I really think that the number of people who would "refuse" to fly through Dubai is small.

percysmith

They resch my SYD-HKG from QF87 2pm to QF127 9am as expected.

They didn't change my MEL-SYD flight which stays at QF428 11:30AM so my itinerary's illegal.

I saw four seats going straight on QF29 from MEL-HKG (wasn't there when I redeemed the award) and tried to seize one of them. MPO (Beijing at least) is standing firm and insisting that's a voluntary rerouting to which a US$100 fee will apply. Trying to get through to MPO Tsuen Wan, and waiting for someone to call me about the illegal itinerary at the same time.

Update 4PM: Same answer from MPO - either accept the earlier booking, refund the ticket in its entirety and queue again, or pay the voluntary US$100/10,000AM rerouting fee.

timster

Sure .. if you don't mind getting up at 3 or 4am.

Dave Noble

a 7am departure from Melbourne ( or Brisbane in wintertimes ) is not that hideous a departure time imo

Thai-Kiwi

Don't forget AKL, WLG, and CHC too!!

timster

Maybe, maybe not. Amongst the people I talk to it isn't. While there are plenty of other places with lousy human rights that we could boycott even for transits, DXB doesn't score well in that regard.

And while you may not get arrested for a few beers or a quick cuddle with a partner of any gender while in the airport, the human rights violations perpetrated by the regime HAVE affected tourists outside the airport; whereas in many other countries tourists (selfishly) rationalize local abuses as unlikely to affect them. Granted the chances of running into trouble may be small for most people, but why bother ?

Furthermore, many people who have been there describe it as one of the more kitsch, tasteless, and vacuous places on earth.

Up against the previous QF Asian transits/stopovers (SIN, BKK, HKG) it's hard to see many people actually preferring DXB.

I and most of my friends intend to continue travelling to Europe via those Asian destinations. If QF make that exceedingly difficult as they seem to be doing, it looks like we will have to take our business elsewhere.

Supersonic Swinger

We may be a small subset of the overall travelling public, but we are definitely a subset.

I much prefer travelling via a SIN, BKK or HKG to Europe, and am glad that BA still fly SYD-SIN-LHR which credit at 100% of miles to AA.

Dave Noble

For transitting there is not much difference between Dubai and places in Asia. It is a modern airport and not much different in going via Singapore. The key difference is that on a r/t between UK and AU, the long flight is on the flight to/from AU rather than to/from UK

I can't see people particularly preferring DXB, I just can't see many people preferring to transit SIN to a level that they would change airlines because of it.

sxc

Given the frequency of CX direct flights to get out of oz from ADL, BNE, SYD, MEL and PER, CX must be rubbing their hands with glee.