Hi there,
I am going to be a good son and takemy mum (regrettably she was bumped down to QF silver this month after being20SC short of renewing gold) to the UK to visit her mum in the UK for a week in early February.I was going to book economy on QF flight numbers (probably QF metal to/from DXB and EK metal to/from LHR). They have some pretty good fares on offer.
I'm based in DRW and mum is in Sydney. Mum much prefers flyingwith someone (she's not infirm or anything - she's just not very good withairports and planes) - so I'm ok to fly down to Sydney to pick her up on theway through to LHR. Conveniently the prices ex DRW (DRW-SYD-LHR) are only a fewdollars more than just the SYD-LHR. Which means that I'm a good $400 better offbooking one through ticket DRW-LHR (with a stopover in SYD) for me, then I ambooking DRW-SYD-DRW on red-e-deals and then SYD-LHR-SYD (on the same booking asmum). Now that JQ has made way for 3K on DRW-SIN-DRW and the DRW-SIN is an early morning rather than late evening flight - the connections to Europe are terrible.
So the upshot of this will be that I will have 2 PNRs one DRW-SYD-LHR (and return) booking for me and a SYD-LHR (and return) booking for mum (with us being on thesame flights SYD-LHR-SYD).
Ordinarily I'd probably burn some points for upgrades - but thereis no J class reward availability for the dates I want so it would be 'onrequest' and with my status I'd probably stand a reasonable chance of getting it butmum would be down the list quite a bit. She wouldn’t be happy sitting inbusiness class with me down the back in economy (I'd insist on her sitting in J even if my upgrade came through). So it's a kind of all ornothing approach.
I know that I am trying to really bend the rules here (and Ireally suspect that the answer is no) - but is there any unpublished (obviouslythe published rules on this are pretty clear) or practical way I can link thebookings to help bump her up to the same priority as me? If I were to try and do it in the lounge before departure is that probably my best option?
As a fall back - the 2 seats on the side of the upperdeck would be greatfor us but mum's silver status means that she can't preselect the upper deck on the QF 380s. If I were to ring the platinum line and ask nicely do you think thatthere is a chance that they would manually allocate her a seat next to meupstairs (if indeed they can actually do that)?
Also - I was going to try and break the journey a little bit in DXB on the way over with 7 or 8 hours in the airside hotel. One of my friends recently had terrible trouble when he tried to checkin to a Dubai city hotel with his girlfriend on the basis that they weren't married and accordingly couldn't stay in the same room. Am I likely to get any pushback on sharing a twin room with my mum (FWIW she's in her mid-60s and I'm in my early 30s and we have the same surname)?
Any other suggestions?
Many thanks,
TripleB
I am going to be a good son and takemy mum (regrettably she was bumped down to QF silver this month after being20SC short of renewing gold) to the UK to visit her mum in the UK for a week in early February.I was going to book economy on QF flight numbers (probably QF metal to/from DXB and EK metal to/from LHR). They have some pretty good fares on offer.
I'm based in DRW and mum is in Sydney. Mum much prefers flyingwith someone (she's not infirm or anything - she's just not very good withairports and planes) - so I'm ok to fly down to Sydney to pick her up on theway through to LHR. Conveniently the prices ex DRW (DRW-SYD-LHR) are only a fewdollars more than just the SYD-LHR. Which means that I'm a good $400 better offbooking one through ticket DRW-LHR (with a stopover in SYD) for me, then I ambooking DRW-SYD-DRW on red-e-deals and then SYD-LHR-SYD (on the same booking asmum). Now that JQ has made way for 3K on DRW-SIN-DRW and the DRW-SIN is an early morning rather than late evening flight - the connections to Europe are terrible.
So the upshot of this will be that I will have 2 PNRs one DRW-SYD-LHR (and return) booking for me and a SYD-LHR (and return) booking for mum (with us being on thesame flights SYD-LHR-SYD).
Ordinarily I'd probably burn some points for upgrades - but thereis no J class reward availability for the dates I want so it would be 'onrequest' and with my status I'd probably stand a reasonable chance of getting it butmum would be down the list quite a bit. She wouldn’t be happy sitting inbusiness class with me down the back in economy (I'd insist on her sitting in J even if my upgrade came through). So it's a kind of all ornothing approach.
I know that I am trying to really bend the rules here (and Ireally suspect that the answer is no) - but is there any unpublished (obviouslythe published rules on this are pretty clear) or practical way I can link thebookings to help bump her up to the same priority as me? If I were to try and do it in the lounge before departure is that probably my best option?
As a fall back - the 2 seats on the side of the upperdeck would be greatfor us but mum's silver status means that she can't preselect the upper deck on the QF 380s. If I were to ring the platinum line and ask nicely do you think thatthere is a chance that they would manually allocate her a seat next to meupstairs (if indeed they can actually do that)?
Also - I was going to try and break the journey a little bit in DXB on the way over with 7 or 8 hours in the airside hotel. One of my friends recently had terrible trouble when he tried to checkin to a Dubai city hotel with his girlfriend on the basis that they weren't married and accordingly couldn't stay in the same room. Am I likely to get any pushback on sharing a twin room with my mum (FWIW she's in her mid-60s and I'm in my early 30s and we have the same surname)?
Any other suggestions?
Many thanks,
TripleB
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