Upgrades for Award Bookings

[The Pope]

I've booked an award economy booking (T class) for March next year for myself Per to Syd and a red-edeal ($312 return!) on the same flights for my wife.

On the return leg, there appears to be 2 J class seats available (using the assumption that available award seats are the same as upgrade seats).

Now my question is should I upgrade my wife's red-edeal ticket and hope that I can get an on departure upgrade for myself (I'm a platinum/QC member) or do they as a rule not allow upgrades to award tickets (T class). There are no available J seats for the Per-Syd leg, or else I might just pay the extra 15k points to go J both ways. Don't really want to have to do that for just 1 way. (already spent 5k on changing the route once- got a date change for free first though).

The plane is listed as a 737-800 so only has 12 Business class seats... what should I do. One solution would be sit separately, but would prefer not to do that.

Any ideas?

 

[QF WP]

Unfortunately you cannot get an ODU on a T class ticket, so you have no chance of getting upgraded.

At present, the two J seat are still available for sale to fare paying pax and won't be released until probably 24-48 hours beforehand into U inventory (if at all).

You could waitlist your wife and score brownie points if it comes through (as you'll be at the top of the waitlist being Plat and remain there as first in, best chance), but is there much use in doing that (unless you want to get away from her for a couple of hours :wink

 

[dajop]

You could waitlist your wife and score brownie points if it comes through (as you'll be at the top of the waitlist being Plat and remain there as first in, best chance), but is there much use in doing that (unless you want to get away from her for a couple of hours :wink

Tsk, tsk..... a posting freak such as yourself should know better than this... unless the rules have recently changed (in which case I offer my humblest apologies)... waitlisting for domestic sectors is not permitted. The best chance is to keep an eye on it (by bugging premium line), or putting in the boarding pass in the QC on the day of departure.

 

[The Pope]

Unfortunately you cannot get an ODU on a T class ticket, so you have no chance of getting upgraded.

I have got a complimentry upgrade (not an ODU) on an international flight (767) due to the economy being overbooked when my tickets were award redemptions - do they ever have to do this for domestic or only very rarely?

Can you use the apparant availability of tickets for sale on the qantas website to gauge the availability of seats?

ie if there are still red e-deals for sale then still plenty of empty seats, if only flexi-saver then not many?
Does this work for business class too? ie using the Qantas flight bookings (not award) if the flight # shows up when you try to book 9 J seats on it(9 is the most you can book online) can you assume that there are currently at least 9 J seats not sold, or will they always sell you a J seat and sort it out at the boarding time?

Can a friendly travel agent tell you exactly how many seats in each class are sold/available or are they not meant to do that? Is there anywhere online to do this, or only for international airlines?

 

[QF WP]

The Pope, yes you could use the QF site as a very rough gauge of availability, but by far the best site that I have found is the ITN web site. Dave thadocta gave me a face-to-face one-on-one training session in SYD QP during one of our meetings. I find exceptional use when used in conjunction with QF Premium Desk.