Lack of Qantas FF seat availability over recent months

[Schuey]

Apologies if this has been done to death already but is anyone noticing an increasing distinct lack of FF availability from Qan over the last 3 months? I'm unfortunate enough not to live in one of the major capital cities, Darwin, so we have less flights that most others but for the last 3 months it has become increasingly impossible to get a FF to anywhere apart from on Jetstar at some ungodly hour of the night. Not just to and from Darwin but also trying to get interconnecting FF flights through Sydney or Melbourne etc.

I'm not sure what the load factors are on the rest of the network but anything to and from Darwin, from my limited personal experience, regularly seems to have less than 10 seats free in economy for a 737-8 and Jetstar is on most flights even less than that. I know capacity has been deliberately reduced overall domestically to increase yields but getting a paid seat on a flight is now becoming challenging and availability of FF seems to have dried up even when looking 6 weeks or more in advance.

Is this a Darwin thing or have others also noticed a similar pattern with their travels or is this just a Darwin centric issue where because of our limited size we don't represent enough of a contribution to the bottom line for more capacity and FF availability?

 

[OATEK]

I have found that you need to get you act together a bit earlier if you want U class now. I put this partly down to the loss of the 767s. I find myself hunting around for A332 flights domestically if I am looking for U class closer than say 3 months out.