Booking via Qantas website.

[stroudie]

Hello,
I have 2 unrelated questions & would greatly appreciate any info. or advice I can receive from my more experienced forumites.
I have tried to use Qantas website to book paid (not award booking) flights from Sydney to Rome, then onto Moscow & then return direct to Sydney. This is for my wife, I'll accompany her to Rome, spend 10 days there & then return by myself to Sydney. She will continue onto Moscow & return to Sydney 4 weeks later. The system doesn't allow this booking, I presume because Qantas does not fly between Rome & Moscow. I naively thought that I could make these bookings as it would allow me or show me the available Oneworld flights. How can I make a booking ?
The 2nd question regards using points to upgrade. I've read on this forum that the best value for redeeming points is to make & pay for a standard economy seat & then request an upgrade to premium economy or business class using points. Qantas have advised that I can do this but upgraded seat allocation is not made until 24hrs prior to departure. There is no guarantee that I will get the upgrade, it depends on other members requests & their status level (gold obviously outweighs my bronze) I can usually pay a lesser fare to get a sale economy seat but this is not able to be upgraded. I can then pay a more expensive fare for a seat that can be upgraded, but no guarantee that it will be. Is this correct ? How do other members upgrade with some sort of positive strike rate ?
Thanks for any replies to this rather long winded post.
Stroudie.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hello,
I have 2 unrelated questions & would greatly appreciate any info. or advice I can receive from my more experienced forumites.
I have tried to use Qantas website to book paid (not award booking) flights from Sydney to Rome, then onto Moscow & then return direct to Sydney. This is for my wife, I'll accompany her to Rome, spend 10 days there & then return by myself to Sydney. She will continue onto Moscow & return to Sydney 4 weeks later. The system doesn't allow this booking, I presume because Qantas does not fly between Rome & Moscow. I naively thought that I could make these bookings as it would allow me or show me the available Oneworld flights. How can I make a booking ?
The 2nd question regards using points to upgrade. I've read on this forum that the best value for redeeming points is to make & pay for a standard economy seat & then request an upgrade to premium economy or business class using points. Qantas have advised that I can do this but upgraded seat allocation is not made until 24hrs prior to departure. There is no guarantee that I will get the upgrade, it depends on other members requests & their status level (gold obviously outweighs my bronze) I can usually pay a lesser fare to get a sale economy seat but this is not able to be upgraded. I can then pay a more expensive fare for a seat that can be upgraded, but no guarantee that it will be. Is this correct ? How do other members upgrade with some sort of positive strike rate ?
Thanks for any replies to this rather long winded post.
Stroudie.

While points for upgrade may be a good use of points (I don't use points for that) I would NOT hold out any expectation that you will indeed be upgraded.

All you end up doing is paying more for your fare and potentially nothing in return. Platiunums, Golds, Silvers will all get priority on the upgrade request before bronze... even if the bronze requested the upgrade 365 days in advance and the rest requested the upgrade 2 days before departure.

The system pretty much sucks. The only time I would recommend an upgrade request is if you have booked the class of travel you are happy with, and a higher class is a bonus. So if you already have business class, a failed request to first won't impinge on your flight too much. But booking economy and getting business class denied would be painful.