How to get QF premium award seats?

[anat0l]

As I'm now in a position to redeem some serious amounts of points, I'm thinking of redeeming for premium (J or F) awards, particularly longhaul (and - you guessed it - particularly on the A380).

Of course, we all know that QF Classic Award inventory in premium classes is extremely limited. So how does one maximise the chances of looking for/booking premium award seating?

I can only identify the following strategies:

• Try the website and "snipe" on the most forward date you can find (i.e. the date which is 353 days after today, or the latest possible date you can select). The odd thing is that the date becomes "active" after 12 midnight, but the inventory is only released about one or two hours after start of business hours. So far, I cannot work out what the exact time is. I'm guessing this is the most common approach (so I'm not the only one hastily refreshing the search screen waiting for the elusive inventory to open up...)
• Call QF. I've heard that QF has some award inventory blocked out and usually only released to those with status.
• Use EF. Problem is that EF (from what I can tell) can only explicitly show X class (Economy Award) and nothing else (i.e. U, Z or P). Only way to "tell" is to look at the miscellaneous inventory for the class of interest, then "guess" the availability from there (i.e. for a Business award, check CDIJ; for a First award, check ARF. The lower the numbers, the higher chance there are no seats available.)
• Use FF Friend. I haven't tried this - anyone want to testify to its usefulness?

Any other suggestions?

Also, these may just be rumours or postulations, but is there any merit to these statements:

• Even if I do the website "sniping" technique, as soon as the inventory is released, there may not be any J or F award inventory (assuming that's what I'm looking for) any way. (The only possibility I can think here is that most or all of the seats in the cabin have been sold for cash, thus no more seats exist for awards). I guess another way to write this statement is (although it sounds like the opposite in essence): when award inventory for a flight is released, there will always be at least one seat released as a Classic award for every class of service offered by that flight (and its associated equipment).
• It is possible for people to put a "hold" on (particular) award seats (either within or outside of the 353 day release time frame), thereby guaranteeing their share of the award inventory provided they can supply the points within some certain time frame. I'm hoping this is a rumour, because it would be quite disappointing if this were the case.

 

[NM]

Use the QF FF points to redeem premium cabin awards on other OneWorld airlines. In my experience, there are a lot more J and F award seats available on BA and CX flights to Europe than on QF flights. Same for US using JL or AA via NRT. But that does not help if the goal is for travel on QF A380 aircraft.

 

[simongr]

I had great success getting J awards SYD-LHR-SYD for two people recently - availability every day almost...

 

[nlagalle]

also try:

www.flightstats.com

under the travel planning --> flight availability

They also show other buckets (I found U for a J upgrade a few weeks back).

I know it works as i got my upgrade and then re-checked the flight and the number had dropped by 1.

cheers,

Nick

 

[Alanslegal]

My suggestion (which is quite obvious) and I'm sure you know it is - be extremely flexible!

Another would be - call the reservations line and have an assisted booking. Tell them of your plan and they would be able to help you with those bookings incl. flights on carriers like CX which do not show up on QF award bookings.

 

[serfty]

The online booking tool awaits midnight UTC before permitting make a flight available.

(11am during daylight saving in the South Eastern States or 10am in QLD)

Apparently one can call before this time on the day and book at the cost of the 2½K "assisted award fee".

 

[mosanator]

Sniper here! I don't have EF or any of that fandangled magic stuff.

Interesting little bit of Info I found out when I did my Award booking recently (that others here may already know, but little old me didn't).

I was making a booking to Europe but had a booking to change to allow it. So I had found the flight and then was on the phone to QF talking to the Agent and I said I wanted flight XYZ on Dec 10 in J for 2 Pax
She said there was no availability.
I said "that's not right I have it here in front of me on my computer".
To which she said, "thats why I (her) can't see it, back out and it will show on my terminal".

I did and the flights appeared on her terminal!

Apparently if you go in and up to the selected flights page, the availability will disappear from the system, until you either log out or discontinue with the booking.

If your looking at a particular flight, no one else can!

Does that sound right, to those people on the inside of QF here?

Or was she having a shocker.

FYI - When I was looking there was a lot of J and F out of MEL, but bugger all elsewhere.

 

[NM]

Does that sound right

Yes, it does sound right. The seats have been "offered" to you. Imagine if someone else came in a booked them while you were waiting and you got to the end only to be told "Sorry, no longer available". Locking them while they have been offered to you is the only logical way to manage such a system.

 

[Travel Guru]

That's true for all areas of airline inventory.

If your TA is holding flight in suspense (HS status), theyre not available until theyre either handed back or if left in suspense will drop back into availability.

TG

 

[jamesatfish]

Call QF. I've heard that QF has some award inventory blocked out and usually only released to those with status.

As a WP I'd strongly advise you just use this option, armed with a vague idea of where you want to go and when you'd like to do so, and you'll be amazed how easy the process is.

For the ~3 years I've been a WP I've made quite a few points bookings using this process:

2x RTW First tickets Dec/Jan booked ~12 months in advance
1x RTW First ticket (+ infant) Jun/Jul booked ~9 months in advance
2x LHR-JFK First tickets Dec booked ~6 months in advance
2x JFK-LHR Business tickets Jan booked ~6 months in advance
2x CBR-SFO Return First tickets Jun/Jul booked ~3 months in advance
1x CBR-LAX Return Business ticket Apr booked ~40 days in advance)
2x CBR-LHR One Way Business tickets Sept booked ~10 days in advance)

Each and every time I've just called the QF telephone bookings line, provided a rough travel plan and let them do the rest. The sales agents have always been really proactive in requesting seats on different routes - being based in CBR helps as they'll often request flights ex-SYD, MEL & BNE thus tripling the chances of having something opened up.

Business tickets have been harder to come by than First tickets - for the CBR-LHR flights we booked about 10 days in advance we just kept requesting different routings on different dates for about a week until eventually some availability opened up.

When you're booking 2x RTW First fares (at 840,000 points combined) the 2,500 point assisted booking fee and 5,000 point change / cancellation fees seem pretty irrelevant.