Sorry - the Dave was to Dave Noble.
In any case, I had to cancel my onward flight from LHR to ARN because of the "can't depart twice from the same country of origin" rule (unless, that is I want to pay extra points for another booking). It would have been OK to take a domestic flight from LHR but not international. At least the Concorde flights worked. Booking now stands at EDI-LHR-JFK-LHR (plus the commercial flights to get there).

ps: as a newcomer to this Board, how do you post a reply and show a quote of someone else's message above your reply? - if that makes sense.

It is quite easy - see above the actual post you wish to reply to, there are a selection of images, one of which has inverted commas (" ") - click on that, and it will include the post you wish to reply to, suitably formatted to indicate that it is being replied to.

Dave

Dave - no, I realised (eventually) that the on-line facility was only for Qantas, it was with a fairly unhelpful character on the end of the Qantas UK phone line.

I assume that you just asked for 1st class availability on LHR-JFK. They werent doing anything silly like looking for economy award availability were they? I had that the 1st time I tried booking. They were telling me no availability until I prompted them for 1st (Z) class

Dave

Dave - the guy just said for each date that there was first class availability but no Concorde. All seemed tremendously unlikely give that others seem to have successfully booked. It's starting to frighten me a little given the mass of points I'm transferring across at the mo.

I've emailed Qantas HQ to see what's going on ('cos the guy in London had never heard of Starwood - that was his level of knowledge!)

It does sound a bit odd. Was he looking for Concorde or just for BA1/BA2 ? COncorde seemed to be amazingly free for award travel when I tried. Perhaps give them a call in the evening when the phone diverts though to Melbourne and see if they can find 1st availability on BA1

Dave

Please make sure that he is looking at the morning flights only. While the afternoon SSC flights are scheduled in the res systems, they are completely zero'd out in all inventory classes. Availability should be wide open for certain in March '03, as that is when I just called two days ago to check. As Dave Noble mentioned, make sure he is checking for Z class on BA1 or BA2 only. I also managed to find a flight with two seats westbound in First from LHR to JFK.

I'm transferring the points as we speak to ticket.

Ryan

The afternoon flight? There is currently only 1 SSC flight per day each way. The only current service is BA1 to JFK and BA2 to LHR

Dave

BA has announced that it will resume twice a day service, and has conveniently added the flights into the reservation system (with typical BA efficiency). Unfortunately the flights don't actually operate yet (I think they start in August, but the exact appears not to be selected yet), so BA has set the available inventory to 0 to prevent any actual booking of these flights. All in all the basis for a good Monty Python skit. So now you know when BA1 is not necessarily the only BA1 (undoubtedly BA's next trick, to reuse flight numbers for our entertainment).

At some point (when & if my Starwood Points post to QF), I hope to be making a reservation on BA. I was going to try for a regular FC on BA JFK-LHR on a Thurs with a return (hopefully) on BA001 LHR-JFK on a Sunday. I know the westbound Concorde is tough to book, but do you think my odds are better (or worse) with travel on a weekend???

Dave - just called them again in the UK and followed your advice. Wonder of wonders, there was availability on most days tried.

Thanks to all here, just joining the queue waiting for SPG points to transfer and then we're away... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Glad to hear that you have been successful. Seems like the trick is not to specifically ask for concorde

Dave

One QF-newbe question concerning Open Jaws:

Let's say I'd like to fly on BA using Qantas miles LHR-JFK on the outbound and back LAX-LHR.

Do I just calculate the actual flown miles or do I have to add the JFK-LAX segment into calculations?

As I understand QF's T&C, this would definetly apply if I return to a point of destination different to my origin and also to Surface Sectors. But what about Open Jaws?

Thanks in advance.

[This message has been edited by connex2me (edited 04-23-2002).]

Planning on claiming a QA/BA reward this summer.
After all my miles post, I plan to have 150K QA.
I need to leave boston and get SST outbound and return in first/concord.
I need to hit paris for about 3 days, and CTA for another 3-4.

Whats my best option?

I would say to get a BA award on concorde/club europe from JFK-LHR-CDG-LHR-FCO-LHR-BOS (or JFK if you want to do concorde both ways) and pay the extra points for a stopover in Paris and purchase a ticket roundtrip from FCO-CTA and from BOS-JFK

This will cost 125,000 for the flight plus an extra 10,000 points for the stopover. The FCO-CTA flight in economy will cost around $220.

If you were to add on the BOS-JFK sector, then it would add 25,000 points to the cost since it would become an OW award with AA/BA. I don't think that a one way from BOS-JFK is worth 25,000 points really. Just buy a cheapie one way or round trip ticket with AA down to New York.

There does not seem to be any OW carriers which fly from London or Paris to CTA so a OW award to CTA doesnt seem possible.

if you want to spend any time in london, you are allowed a stopover of up to 23hrs 59 minutes for no charge

Dave