Will Qantas always fill premium cabins with upgrade requests?

[Flyboi420]

Potentially silly question, but is it safe to assume that most of the time if a business or PE seat is available, and someone has requested classic upgrade rewards, the seat would get filled?

In what scenarios would they not take the points and put the passenger in a seat that otherwise would’ve been empty?

 

[Warragul]

You may get varied responses to thse questions. Ive been on long haul QF flights with a few business class seats empty and no indication that they were not to be used so maybe they don't fill them up all the time. But I assume they would fill them.

The scenario for not filling is (perhaps) make the cabin surrounds less crowded for those who paid a J class fare, but I can't see that happening a lot of the time. Weight limitation perhaps?

At the end of the day we're making educated guesses based off our experience.

 

[serfty]

A decade ago, there would often be many seats in premium cabins vacant.

These days those seats are "monetised" fully and generally with Qantas' "as late as the gate" upgrades, it is rare an operational premium seat is vacant on departure.