heb999

Thanks. I rang Qatar who seemed happy for me to re-route to Manila but as I had booked the ticket through an agent I had to ring them. The agent wants to charge me Ł1150 extra as they say my fare is in R class (the cheapest business class) and I would have to change to a higher class. Back to Qatar who say that this is not the case. I spent most of the morning going backwards and forwards between Qatar and the agent (MyTrip.com) but never got anywhere. Not sure what to do next.

brunos

You are caught in a trap.
You cannot deal directly with QR but with your TA. That's why I would never deal with a TA nowadays.

I am still very surprised that QR tells you that they would change your destination without cost to MNL. I see no reason why they would change your destination to MNL without fee as they do fly to HKG and there are no travel advisory for HKG. Maybe they mean that they waive the change fee, but you still have to pay the fare difference as there is no R bucket currently available. Maybe the QR phone agent was not aware that there is no R availability around your travel date.

A lot of things can change in a month. They might cancel the DOH-HKG flight, they might open R availability to MNL, Philippines could drop their restrictions on HKG transit,.etc.
I would suggest that you wait a bit to see how the situation evolves.
And maybe you might decide to cancel the whole trip.

plunet

As the previous poster says, you appear to be trapped.

There are two things I can suggest.

• the fare you purchased via trip.com is not covered by the same rules that QR would apply for a ticket purchased directly from them, and although you are being led to be believe by QR your ticket has a waiver applicable to it, because it's purchased through a 3rd party that might not apply.
• Get yourself on a phonecall where you can expand to a conference call. Call QR first and get an agent to confirm that your ticket has a waiver covering it and could be changed for free; then conference in trip.com and get the two people talking. The difficulty here is that trip.com agents would usually speak to travel trade B2B agents not direct customer B2C agents but this might help.

My experience of trip.com customer service is that it is usually good when dealing with Chinese airlines and other travel within the Chinese mainland, but this is the only time I have used them. From what I have read on the forum they are not so great when dealing with agents outside of China. This might be a symptom of the difficulty you are facing.

You do still have time to resolve this and as said above things may become clearer in days and weeks to come.

heb999

Thanks for the advice. Yes, there maybe some confusion regarding fare classes etc. One lesson that I have learnt is not to use TAs in the future. I used one in this instance so that I could pay in Łs and so avoid the foreign transaction fee. I now have a card with 0% transaction fees. The hotel in the Philippines has offered to change the booking so that I can go within the next 12 months, if all else fails. If I cannot change the Qatar ticket I will still fly to HKG but then go somewhere else from there like Thailand, Vietnam etc. In the meantime I will take your invaluable advice and wait a while and see how this situation develops.

sigma421

The one thing I would add on an agent ticket is that QR can take full control of it 96 hours out (they’ve confirmed to me in writing that this is the case). In retrospect, I wasted a lot of time talking to an agent who promised to call me back within 24 hours after speaking to QR (it’s now 8 days later and I’m in Doha...). Keep calm and call back 4 days before your flight when QR can actually do something. Be polite but firm with the agent and if they outright refuse to check with a supervisor hang up and call again.

CommittedLurker

Is there anyone concerned here about the coronavirus spreading rapidly in Iran and S Korea ? It is already reported to have spread to the UAE through Iran.

I don't know much about Iran-Qatar or S Korea-Qatar travel volumes etc.

How worried should I be about this ?

Tofino87

I can’t help but think, if we’re being realistic here, this won’t be contained. I’ve thought this since the get-go.

The world is just too inter-connected these days. But, with the fact that transmission evidently takes place before displaying symptoms - it’s so difficult to make allowances for that.

The best they can hope to do is to slow the spread whilst vaccines are developed.

im359

I would say places with good hygiene awareness / previous lesson learnt from SARS would be a bit better.

I booked a trip in April between HKG & UK via DOH.
As long as I opted to wear mask during my flights, I am worrying more on the immigration or flight cancellation.

Meanwhile, the latest travel alert shows flights suspension has been extended to March-April.

brunos

I flew last week on DOH-CDG. Most pax were coming from various Asian cities. Two Asian pax were coughing a lot and not wearing masks during the flight (only upon boarding). That got me quite worried.
Some people are not worried by Covid-19, but I am given my advanced age. Even if you fly from a relatively-safe Asian origin, you get a mix of pax using the DOH-EU QR flights.

Arghmeinaugen

We are booked onto OSL-SIN with QR.

Now my son's school have advised that any children returning from an effected area, have to self quarantine for 2 weeks after and will not be allowed into school, which is not feasible.

As we are only able to go during school holidays, it is not possible to change to another date

QR have advised that tickets are non refundable, but will allow a free of charge reroute...... but only to other effected countries. Which makes no sense at all.

Though they did advise that if we did change and flights to that country were cancelled, then we would get a full refund (or further reroute).

Faced with 2x options, just use them as a one way fare to DOH or take the reroute to the country most likely to have flights cancelled.

doctoravios

Can they reroute you to Seoul? That would be the most obvious choice for high risk of cancellation right now.

Matt4

Did you get an official list of affected areas according to Norway authorities ? Because if 1 case in a country means that the whole country is considered as an affected area then you can start the quarantine now as Norway has just got its first case of infection reported... ;-)

ChrisBub

Has anyone had any experience with asking QR about interlining on 2 sep tickets (QR and VN in my case) in context of COVID 19? I have an OSL-BKK with QR and then connecting on separate ticket to Hanoi with VN on Apr 1, and would like to avoid entering Thailand (not over worries about virus, more over potential travel restrictions from entering Thailand, where I won't actually be staying). Over Xmas, we flew CNX-BKK (TG) and then BKK-ARN (QR) and TG had no issue adding the QR PNR to their ticket and checking luggage through the whole way from CNX. But I guess checking through with QR may be more problematic than with TG.

I know QR have an interline agreement with VN, but had assumed they wouldn't interline on sep tickets. Wondering if they may more flexible due to the virus issues. Any insight from anyone here?

spec119

Saaw

khabah

I’m Kuwait-based and have been out of the country for about a week, and not only has COVID-19 landed in Kuwait two days ago, but a series of gross mismanagement has now seen 43 confirmed cases sprout up in that short period. I tried calling QR several times to alter a few upcoming trips where I can skip returning to Kuwait, but they’ve been inflexible about changing anything without penalty unless a travel advisory is formally issued, at which point they can waive penalties.

Any suggested courses of action?

khabah