nonce

Dave, I think you are missing the point. First, let's imagine that it was actually possible to reach P1 by flying SYD-BNE on $120 red-e-deals. You would need 360 sectors to do this, or 180 return flights, or 1 flight a day for the entire year (minus 5 days to rest). Regardless of this minor detail your spend with QF will still be $43,200 a year. Are you saying that QF would be loosing money on this PAX over the whole year vs flying with that seat empty (given the probability of actually finding that many red-e-deals throughout the year, let alone one for the +1 as well)? If you +1 was with you on each flight that would be $86,400 a year to QF.

Changing a flight actually costs QF nothing and in many cases assist them. They can then sell that empty seat as a higher fare bucket, while the new seat taken generally would have remained empty for the 1P to go standby anyway. Likewise what is the actual cost of upgrading a 1P to business as a ODU? The seat will have gone empty anyway. So the cost is a slight increase in catering?

The only real cost is the limo, but as I understand QF already provides CL members with free valet parking or have I misunderstood one of the CL benefits? Likewise QF already provide CL's with far greater flexibility in terms of changing flights and upgrades.