OneWorld is a great alliance and one that is important to me because I used a OneWorld Explorer award ticket to go on my 5 month 15 country trip around the world. Read this article I wrote about the ABC’s of Airline Alliances if you don’t know how the major alliances work(and why you should care). I’ve written before about how to use AA.com to check out American Airlines award availability and I’ve written about how to use British Airways site to check OneWorld availability and book using BA Miles. If you want the best way to view all of the OneWorld partners in one spot, including the ones with really nice premium cabins such as Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines, then using Qantas.com is the way to go.
It may seem at first strange that you would use Qantas’ web site if you want to check Cathay Pacific or LAN or British Airways award seats, but in my experience it is usually one of the best ways of finding the flights you need. In addition, it offers a whole month view at a time so is better than British Airways one week view and not limited to just a few airlines like American’s site is.
What do I need?
If you have followed our Getting Started page, then you will already have a free Qantas frequent flyer account as well as an AwardWallet account which will make things really convenient because it will automatically log you into your Qantas account for you.
Searching on Qantas step by step
1. After you have logged in, click on the Frequent Flyer drop down then the Award Flights option under Using Points shown here in a blue circle.
2. Click on the Quantas & Partner Classic Awards Book Now button.
3. Scroll down on the next screen and fill in the “From”, “To”, “Depart”, and “Return” boxes and make sure that “Flexible with Dates” is selected and then hit Search Flights. For this example, we will choose a trip from Miami to Bangkok.
4. On the next screen a full month of availability will be displayed, but the default is just coach. Since it is a long flight, I want to see the business and first class availability too. So check those boxes then hit Go..
5. The available award seats will now show up in all of the classes for a month at a time! Once you have found dates that offer availability, select those dates on the calendar then click Continue to see the available flights and carriers. It is sometimes easier to search for each one way separately.
It will show the available flights, airlines, and times. Since Bangkok is too far to have a direct flight, the above shows two different options: One on a combination of American Airlines and British Airways through London in First Class. One on a combination of American Airlines and Cathay Pacific in Economy Class.
The best way to search if you want a certain airline is to look at the “Where We Fly” maps for that airline and figure out where their hub locations are and then piece together the individual flights from there. If you wanted to fly Cathay Pacific for example you would look for the flight from New York JFK to Hong Kong first (because the long flights are usually the hardest to find award seats on), then from Miami to New York, then finally from Hong Kong to Bangkok. You would have to have availability on all 3 flights in the class you wanted so it may take some experimenting.
Write down the flights when you find them and when you find an itinerary that works, then call your OneWorld carrier to book! Give them the flights one by one and they should be able to see the same availability we just found. If you run into troubles it is often best to just hang up and call back because a different rep probably can help. Sometimes it is like putting a puzzle together but when you get an itinerary that works it feels great.
Conclusion
I hope this post shows you the best way to search for OneWorld availability using the Qantas web site and helps you get some award seats booked!
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