What is the use of QFF points?

[Traveller1955]

I am QF Silver (lifetime) will probably not get lifetime gold on current status earn. On a recent Oz trip my wife and I were in Darwin airport awaiting our return flight to Sydney. I approached the check in staff and asked if an upgrade can be made at the airport as I had the points and one business class seat was available. I was told that she could not do anything please see the Qantas Club staff which I did. About 45 minutes before boarding Qantas Club staff told me that there were no business class seats available as the flight was full. OK I thought. To my annoyance when we boarded there was one business class seat unoccupied?

Why is this? If you have the points and no one with higher status wants the seat why will not Qantas use the points held?

 

[Sdtravel]

IM not sure how fair that is.
We dont know why that seat was empty. Could have been broken, could be catering (would you have been happy with "Catering Not Assured" on your BP?), could have been a connecting pax or regular pax who didnt make it.
We dont know so its hard to speculate.

 

[RichardMEL]

side question but... one seat and there were 2 of you. Were you going to give the seat to your wife if you got it?

As above there are many reasons why that seat could fly empty not all of them obvious.

also why didn't you put in the upgrade request when you booked ahead of time if you had the points? I'm a little perplexed... ODU's are not guaranteed at all.

 

[eminere]

side question but... one seat and there were 2 of you. Were you going to give the seat to your wife if you got it?

More importantly though, if both OP and wife were on the same booking wouldn't the upgrade request have to apply to both (all passengers in the booking)? So if there was only one seat in business left the upgrade request would fail, right? Do lounge staff have the ability to split up bookings?

 

[RichardMEL]

More importantly though, if both OP and wife were on the same booking wouldn't the upgrade request have to apply to both (all passengers in the booking)? So if there was only one seat in business left the upgrade request would fail, right? Do lounge staff have the ability to split up bookings?

That is also a very good point. Though wouldn't the angel see that right away and tell the OP? at least the reason would make sense

 

[casanovawa]

No real point to them, if you want to unburden yourself of them i can give you my account number cuz???

 

[Sdtravel]

No real point to them, if you want to unburden yourself of them i can give you my account number cuz???

LOL, i responded first so clearly i should be first in line to help unburden the OP.

 

[BD1959]

To answer the core question:
[h=2]What is the use of QFF points?[/h]- To make Qantas lots of money! Qantas bank on a very large percentage of points *never* being redeemed; those that are can be manipulated via changes to redemption rates to (again) QF benefit - it's their own currency which they can work to their advantage and they do tweak the scheme from time-to-time, again to their own advantage.

You basically have two choices: you either accept the "mirage" of and endless sea of redemptions for being precisely that (a mirage); or you choose to take them on at their own game.

As this was a domestic upgrade, there are various threads out there outlining lots of ways to determine the likelihood of a Domestic Upgrade; there are also lots of (historic) threads outlining reasons why J seats may go empty at times when you (and I) might like the upgrade. The official channel in your scenario is always to go to the QC (supposedly on departure upgrade possibilities are a "benefit" not becoming of those in the general terminal)- but, again, be aware QF are *not* going to go out of their way to allow you to cash-in when it is in their financial interest to not do so - and in this instance obviously QF decided that was the case.

Again, it's part of the "game" you've subscribed to ... !!

Regards,

BD