I self fund all my travel so I certainly won’t be paying the Qantas premium. I used to fly JQ a lot and don’t particularly mind the lack of amenities, but I do hate their IRROPS handling. While it’s a reality of air travel there’s too many times I had the spend the night at an airport hotel and take leave from work the next day because the next available flight is not available until the mid day the next day and I wasn’t in a position to fork out 500+ dollar for a same day ticket on QF/VA on whatever’s available the last minute.
So 3 years ago I switch my flying to VA. Costs me a bit more but since then those kind of disruption has never happened to me again (fingers crossed). With the amount of flights I take I quickly made plat and have been enjoying fly ahead and also the few times I had my flight cancelled even on busy period the system has always managed to put me on the next on due to priority handling for status holders so that’s a big win. Economy X and free WiFi is nice, so was the 4x upgrade which I feel like makes it enough to justify the additional cost compared to flying JQ
