Reward flights found through AA - book through Qantas??
 

Need to get sister from Stuttgart to NYC on certain dates in April, looking to use points to book reward flights.

WP, but coming up with nothing on extensive (all cabins, nearby cities, flex dates etc.) Qantas searches.

Found award flights on AA website, question is, can I somehow book these through Qantas with Qantas points? By calling maybe? Unfortunately all eggs in one basket with plenty of Qantas points but nothing else.

Relying on some expert advice here as this has been a frustrating process to date!

As an aside, I find it a bit annoying that Qantas gives no indication (as apparently others do) of how many reward seats are left - at some stages found a couple of possible flights, and hours later they were gone!

If you have QF ff points you need to book with QF via web or phone
If you have AA ff miles you need to book with AA via web or phone
AA are know to have phantom availability (that is rewards flights are not really available)
AA also have saver and anytime rewards. For QF points you need saver.
People are booking reward flights all the time. Eu USA can be hard to get

Try searching using BA or JAL engine

JAL is supposed to be most reliable. BA comes up with phanton availability too at times. I have found Qantas is quite good at finding available seats, so am surprised your experience is otherwise

Thanks Mwenenzi! I've found Saver flights so guess I'll give Qantas a buzz and soon find out whether these are an example of phantom availability or not!

Will do, thanks. Think I searched BA at one point but will do again. Definitely haven't tried JAL so will do that also.

If you are looking for an AA flight, use the AA booking tool. It will return results for both AA (can be very rare trans-atlantic) and BA (common for the transatlantic leg).

I've done a lot of searching over the last week or so, the AA site's availability has been spot on (QF could see everything). However... results can vary depending on which page you start your search. If you search from the homepage results can often be limited. Going to the 'plan travel' tab at the top of the page, then the 'flights' tab. This opens up a lot more availability as it defaults to 'all airlines' rather than just AA.

Connecting AA flights in the USA can be difficult for QF to see. In those cases you might need to feed them airport by airport.

Sometimes the seats are reserved while you are booking and then not returned to inventory (based on a sophisticated yield management algorithm). Rather ironically your activity can cause seats to disappear (I am guilty of having done this myself, checking too many different routings that have a common leg, which then dries up for that one sector).

In the past AA often had more availability for train connections (which book as AA codeshares), not sure if that is still true but worth a try if you are stuck. Also the trains used to be "offline" so a missed train doesn't cancel your AA flight booking as a missed flight would. I don't know the current situation but this was true a few years ago. Finally connecting through LHR would get you tons more award availability though EXP may see more than OWE (not sure, I've been both for too long). So many seats LHR-JFK that it is rare to not find availability if you have time flexibilty.

Thanks all for help, ended up ringing Qantas and organising booking manually, in other words going through the award itinerary I could see on the AA website flight by flight and getting the agent to build it up as a booking.

Taxes were signif. more expensive than appeared on the AA website for the same flights, but it had got to the stage where I didn't even care anymore and just wanted to make the booking so didn't question it! Any idea why the tax difference for the same flights though?

Flights are a mix of AA/BA/AB.

I see now on other threads that others are also having issues with seeing AA award availability through QF!

Real taxes on award flights are the same for all airlines for the same route and class. A surcharge can trigger additional real taxes if the flight changes from a non revenue flight to a revenue flight.

A "carrier imposed surcharge", as QF & BA apply on awards, goes direct to the airline (=profit). A "carrier imposed surcharge" is not a tax. Those who mix taxes and surcharges and consider surcharges as taxes are being take as fools by the airline (they like it that way)
.

Still, if grinna had generated the award routing on the AA website, it shouldn't have lead to a different "cash supplement" should it, apart from a possible QF telephone booking charge?

AA charge a carrier imposed surcharge for awards on BA flights made with AA ff miles.
AA also have a $75? close in award fee if the award is made xx days before the flight.

My thoughts exactly, deeruck. For the record, it was ~$150 AUD more "cash supplement" with Qantas than had appeared on AA for identical flights/dates/coding/cabins.

I queried Qantas about this (via Facebook message) and received this somewhat less than satisfactory reply:

"Hello xxx, thanks for taking the time to get in touch with us. While we do understand your frustrations, the prices offered by American Airlines will be different as we operate as different airlines. Yes, we do charge booking fees but this was waived for you as a one-off. Sorry we can't make any comments on the fares you were quoted on by another airline. Zen"

Still no clearer why this has happened!

Go figure... the amount I ended up paying QF for a BA/AA itinerary was USD33 (AUD44) less than the amount quoted on the AA website!