Business in just one direction

[Jaymez]

No matter how many different routes I tried and different dates spread around a two week period, I couldn't get business class to LA. The AAdvantage operator had no options so I booked on line to save some fees.

2 PAX US$133.20 each

9 Aug QF Per-Syd-LA Econ 37,500pts each
13 Sep LA-SYD-(15SEP) Syd-MEL-PER Business 62,500 pts each

Note I couldn't get Syd-Per even though there would have been quite a few QF flights on that route on that day!

Anyone know if you can wait list for Bus on AAdvantage? If so how?

It does seem that the closer the date of travel the much less availability.

 

[smit0847]

We need a sticky/wiki for QF award availability....

 

[NM]

Qantas business class flights Australia to/from USA are scarce, especially in the 2-month period you are looking for. Qantas does not tend to release many premium cabin award seats between the time that the initial allocation has been used (often 10-11 months before travel date) and the last week or two before travel date. This is especially true when looking for more than one seat on the same flights. The initial allocation of FF redemption seats are snapped up very quickly. Then few more are allocated until the last few weeks before departure. If just looking for one seat you may be lucky, but for two its rare to find them once the initial allocation has been consumed.

When I needed to make a change for my daughter's award travel about a month before travel date, originally routed LAX-BNE in economy cabin, the only seats I could secure for her was in first class via NRT using JAL. Nothing at all in any class on QF trans-Pacific for a 2 week period, yet multiple choices of date o JAL. But luckily I only needed one seat as needing 2 would have greatly reduced the chances of finding anything.

 

[Jaymez]

Thanks, I didn't even know initial allocations are done that far in advance - I will need to plan ahead better. I did try JAL via NRT but no joy. Yes, sometimes I checked what came up if I was just looking for one seat and I could have done something, but two is harder. At one stage I had sorted out online that I could go via HKG, but I had trouble completing the payment online. My wife had finally changed her account name to her passport name, but hadn't changed her ccard name so it didn't compute using her points. I rang the agent who confirmed the seats were available but between doing that and calculating the fees and getting ccard details they disappeared!