Can my Platinum friend help with award booking?

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TahoeSkier

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Hi all

A conversation over dinner with a good friend last night got us thinking what he might be able to do to assist me with making my next award booking (USA). He's been Plat for a few years but isn't quite sure exactly what (if anything) he could do to help. At a basic level, I know he will have far better visibility of award seats as they are released.

Would we be able to leverage his greater award seat visibility somehow?
Would he be able to make an award booking on my behalf (2 pax), but not actually be on the booking himself?

Not interested in doing anything 'questionable' but he'd love to help if he can.

Any advice much appreciated!
 
I thought of the same asking a good friend who is lifetime gold, but thought the answer would be as that above. I have gone from plat down to Bronze since semi retiring, been a loyal Qantas customer.
We have near half M points but cant even find international Y or J seats to a number of destinations unless they go through Timbuktu to get to them, its so dam frustrating and I get so dam annoyed.
 
I thought of the same asking a good friend who is lifetime gold, but thought the answer would be as that above. I have gone from plat down to Bronze since semi retiring, been a loyal Qantas customer.
We have near half M points but cant even find international Y or J seats to a number of destinations unless they go through Timbuktu to get to them, its so dam frustrating and I get so dam annoyed.

My uncle used to be Gold which was helpful, but sadly no family members these days. I figured my friend probably wouldn't be able to 'make' bookings for me, but thought there might be a way he could give a leg up on seat avails for instance.

There's no substitute for hard work though - I am used to booking a year-ish out, and regularly monitoring avails myself.
 
Just wondering whether there's any way he could help - for example giving a heads up on seat avails etc.

Sure. But your problem would be moving the availability offered to higher status QFF members over to yourself, unless you are an eligible family member.
 
Get your friend to make the premium award booking for the two of you and on that same flight he/she can make an economy award booking so that it’s all on the same ticket and Plat Member is flying (per T&Cs). Once ticketed, the Plat Member pays the small cancelation fee (6000 points?) for his or her award which is passed onto you.

I’ve been doing this for and with others across QF and VA for a while now. One of the best uses of this method is on VA for paid complimentary Platinum upgrades. Same approach, Plat Member cancels his/her portion of the reservation after full ticketed. Just make sure you don’t call back and cancel the Plat member’s ticket within 20 minutes as often they are still working on finalizing the ticket and you can get caught out - speaking from personal experience.

BTW OP, your avatar pic gave me a laugh and gave me the motivation to post my comment. Now ‘I’m going to go ahead and ask you move your desk over there’
 
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Get your friend to make the premium award booking for the two of you and on that same flight he/she can make an economy award booking so that it’s all on the same ticket and Plat Member is flying (per T&Cs).

While it might work, it's not according to the Qantas T&Cs. With Qantas, a "friend" in an award booking must be a family member. You have to enter the family relationship at the time of making the booking.
 
While it might work, it's not according to the Qantas T&Cs. With Qantas, a "friend" in an award booking must be a family member. You have to enter the family relationship at the time of making the booking.

Ah - in that case I wouldn't do it.

If they were to tell me that they could see 2x J seats on 'x' day, and I called QF to make the booking direct myself, could the booking be placed? Or would the phone operator, upon learning my QF number/status, advise me that those seats aren't available to me?
 
While it might work, it's not according to the Qantas T&Cs. With Qantas, a "friend" in an award booking must be a family member. You have to enter the family relationship at the time of making the booking.

Agreed. But with a little imagination your friend can become family quite easily. We’re not talking about buying hundreds of thousands of points from Tuvz on OzBargain and then redeeming them and the OP ending in one of those innocent ‘the airline closed my account’ threads.

With the QFF program designed to work against you (yes, I’m a QF cynic), sometimes a little flexibility in your approach can work for you. I see this is as very minimal risk to achieve an otherwise impossible outcome for the OP.
 
Agreed. But with a little imagination your friend can become family quite easily. We’re not talking about buying hundreds of thousands of points from Tuvz on OzBargain and then redeeming them and the OP ending in one of those innocent ‘the airline closed my account’ threads.

While it may work, I wouldn't be comfortable doing it, and I wouldn't expect my friend to take the risk.

If there's something above board he could do to help, great, otherwise no stress.
 
I've helped my non-status QFF friends in some circumstances. Eg I've personally called the Qantas call centre using the QFF priority number but have then always first asked if they were prepared to look at my friend's issue. So far they have always obliged.

As for releasing award seats that are supposed to be available due to higher QFF status? You can always ask - they can only say "no".
 
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I've helped my non-status QFF friends in some circumstances. Eg I've personally called the Qantas call centre using the QFF priority number but have then always first asked if they were prepared to look at my friend's issue. So far they have always obliged.

As for releasing award seats that are supposed to be available due to higher QFF status? You can always ask - they can only say "no".

Yep think we might try this. Not treading on any toes, and all above board. Thanks for the tip.
 
If you're trying to get a premium award seat on a Qantas-operated long-haul flight, the seats would probably be released to your Platinum friend 353 days out. Any remaining seats should then become available to you 297 days out.

Your friend could help you by searching for what award flights he/she can see 298-299 days out, so that you know exactly what to book at 11am, 297 days out.
 
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