Originally Posted by martynriddle
The worst one has to be No guaranteed upgrades using points. You will only know if your upgrade has been successful when you check in. How this will be managed will be very interesting - how will the fare codes look? I suppose on the night before a flight, the system will see how many spare F or J seats there are on a flight and simply transition everyone on the points waitlist across on the basis of status then chronological order.
No upgrade of cheapo fares also seems to be a big loss. Combined with the above, it seems obvious that QF want to drive passengers to purchase higher margin fares.
While I agree with Dave Noble that this is understandable from QF's point of view, for me, this just plain stinks. Basically the ability to upgrade economy class tickets to business for my personal travel is the reason why I fly Qantas and oneworld - even if it means going out of my way / paying more for flights and taking less direct routings. Frankly I don't care about domestic award travel or even domestic upgrades -- it's just the int'l upgrades that matter for me.
Seeing as United/Star Alliance serves my U.S. home port with two flights instead of three on Qantas/AA, for frequently significantly less $$, and with the option of E+ when you attain status...come May I will probably make my next bookings with them. United's economy class stinks, but Qantas' ain't that much better. And for business, the thought of flying SQ to London is very enticing...
ps. Dave I completely agree- how can Upgrade Credits be confusing??