I'm booked to fly EY BNE-MEL-AUH-LHR return in economy.

I'm booked to fly EY BNE-MEL-AUH-LHR return in economy. I checked my itinerary online and discovered the MEL-BNE on the return has been moved onto QF because there's not enough time between landing in MEL and taking off (5 minutes). They're still selling tickets for the VA connection, and I want to be on VA for the status credits (why I chose EY). Apparently my QF flight will be "endorsed" by EY, and I should be able to still get points and status with VA. Has anyone ever heard of such things? What would you do?

It's called Original Routing Credit and you ought to get it if they say you will.

If it were me, though, I'd be annoyed to get stuck on QF because I don't have QF status, so I'd call up and try to get my flight shifted. to a VA one With BNE-MEL flights every hour it ought to be possible.

(Then again, I might look at the schedule and realise that I'm already flying for 28 hours or so and I don't wanna add an extra 55 minutes on the beginning, but hey, it's up to you...)

Thanks Hugo

I tried to get them to put me back onto the EY6660/VA353 flight that I chose to start with (and they're still selling) but apparently there's a "minimum connection time" problem. Seems odd that they still sell a ticket knowing they can't honour it. The EY flight gets in 1h40m before Virgin's last flight out of Melbourne, the QF leaves 10mins later. Apparently the rule is 1h45m minimum.

They did suggest routing me direct LHR-AUH-BNE, except that the AUH-BNE trip has a stop in SIN. If I'm gonna do 2 stops, I want all legs to count. That's why I picked the MEL connection to start with.

That seems like a very generous MCT of 105 mins intl to dom in MEL. It will be about 6pm in MEL so a very quiet time to arrive internationally and the terminal transfer takes about 45 seconds as oppose to the 30+ minutes in SYD and BNE. I would have no hesitation doing it myself but if you're under the published MCT then EY can't let you fly it. EY 777 Y is horrendous so I would be moving to the AUH-SIN-BNE flight to break the trip up. Depending on when you are flying you may get the EY 787 which will be better in Y than the 777. 

If I were to switch onto the AUH-SIN-BNE it would be A340 LHR-AUH then A330 down to BNE.

I just question why it is they can sell tickets for the connection in Melbourne, even though the MCT rules say it can't be done?

I'm sticking with the MEL option, taking the QF leg back to BNE - although I have heard that you can essentially double dip on points because of this Original Routing Credit system. Is this true?