As for Death :-: experience, my brother had this shoved on him last year.

In January 2004, he booked in 3 reward seats + 1 Red e-deal on the same flights with Qantas for MEL-OOL, up on 29th Dec 2004, returning mid January 2005. This was for Him, his wife and two young sons.

We know what happened to QF MEL-OOL flights last year.

In July he was offered two choices: 1) Replacement JQ Flights, or 2) a Complete refund of all points and $$$.

He settled for the former, which ended up a real pain as they changed the flights three further times before he travelled; eventually departing 6:30am from MEL (as distinct from his original 9:30 QF booking). Really nice, as he lives in Warragul, some 2½ hours drive from MEL.

I personally would have pushed for gratis re-routing on QF via Sydney.

He accepted the second option because he felt there was no choice. (He didn't ask me, I would have told him differently) What chance of rebooking 4 seats over New year on that routing with either points or red e-deal mid year? Yeah, none.