PRELUDE: Transpacific Business Class Airfares ... or not


TOWNSVILLE ~ Fitzy's Poverty Palace (Queensland, AUS)

Trip Planning & Overview ~ March 7th, 2020
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Greetings & Salutations Trendsetters & Taxdodgers,

How good is my shit magnet working?

It would be no understatement to say that planning for my upcoming G’Day USA 2020 trip has been the most involved and somewhat frustrating one that I’ve experienced to date.

Aside from my well-documented Visa issues, it seems that with the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, even though you may have accumulated nearly 400,000 points and have elevated participant status, you feel like you barely have enough points to get Uber ride around the airport.

Planning for my upcoming trip to participate in the 2020 World Golden Oldies Rugby Festival in Denver, Colorado, USA started approximately a month or two after returning from the 2018 Festival in Christchurch, New Zealand. Basically I’d booked and paid to go on this year’s event and then decided to wait until around 12 months prior to departure to sort out the airfares, accommodations and arranging both pre & post-festival activities with my usual Dingoes "View Crew" consisting of - ET & Trina, Josie and Shazza

The plan was to not only save a bit of money but also treat myself to a comfy long-haul business class seat on this trip. In conjunction with my travel agent Michelle Jardine at Travel Associates - Castletown, we spent the best part of an afternoon in order to book & pay for the six flights required to cross the pond. With associated taxes and fees, it ended up costing me a total of $890.78, but Qantas could not find any transpacific flights for love or money, even though Michelle and I could see shit tons of available business class seats through Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas/Fort Worth. In the end we had to deal directly with One World partner Cathay Pacific to register for fares that Qantas were either unwilling or unable to locate.

I was pleased to see by early evening, I was subsequently ticketed business class airfares from Sydney through Hong Kong to JFK International Airport in New York City. With this segment of the trip seemingly all squared away, which for mind meant that I could solely focus on the in-country activities, at my leisure with no stress over the next 6 months or so.

Just before Christmas I received an email from Cathay Pacific informing me that I had a flight change on the Hong Kong to New York leg. The email confirmed my new booking and asked me to log into the website and select my seat to confirm the confirmation, at which time the flights would be re-ticketed by Qantas. Unbeknownst to me, my travel agent goes to verify my seats in mid-January only to find out that I have no flights to the United States.

I contacted Qantas to ascertain exactly what was going on and was informed by them that my flights were still awaiting approval from Cathay Pacific. I contacted Cathay Pacific and was informed that Qantas had not ticketed the new flight changes and as such they had been dropped - as they had not been actioned in a timely manner by Qantas. In contacting Qantas again, I was able to speak with one of the Hobart team members who actually took a butchers at the PNR notes and confirmed that Qantas had had in fact dropped the ball on this matter. You would think it would have been a straightforward matter of simply rebooking re-ticketing the flights, but as my shit magnet will attest, there is no such thing as is a straight shot with international travel and me at times.

Not a word of lie, since the 15th of January I have spent an accumulative 23 ½ hours on the telephone with Qantas and 11 hours with Cathay Pacific in trying to get my seats back, culminating in a two-hour 20 minute call yesterday afternoon, of which 97 minutes was being on hold.

In order to accommodate flight scheduling and availability, I had moved my trip forward by a day, my arrival airport changed from JFK International in New York to Newark Liberty International in New Jersey and now back again to JFK, to get my previously booked & ticketed business class seats. Several times during these endeavours I’ve went from having no seats to multiple seats, to being ticketed under ticketed than reticketed, waitlisted and now as of 7 PM last night, I received written confirmation that my flights have been ticketed - which is precisely where I was on July 19th last year.

Yeah I know it’s first world problems, but at the end of the day I’m grateful to (a) have a seat in the plane, (b) not having to put my hand in my pocket for the full cost of the business class seats and (c) be fortunate enough to be able to travel. On a positive note I actually arrive in New York City at 1:30 PM instead of my scheduled 11:45 PM which I reckon is a big win. I can also vouch for how awesome the Qantas Customer Service team in Hobart actually are.

Retrospectively, no one should ever have to spend nearly a week on the phone in resolving somebody else’s oversight. Fair dinkum I’ve had shorter flights than several of the phone calls that I was on hold for in to resolve the matter that was no fault of my own.

Hopefully I don’t have any similar issues with the six flight, seven activity, five hotel, three rental car and one train ride that I’ve booked so far.

Happy trails from here??? Here's to hoping.



• TOWNSVILLE (Queensland, AUS) to NEW YORK (New Yor, USA)
via BRISBANE (Queensland, AUS), SYDNEY (New South Wales, AUS) & HONG KONG (Hong Kong, China)