Originally Posted by NM
Finding J and F availability on QF long-haul flight in the next 12 months is going to be tough. The QF program undergoes a restructure on May 25th, when the points required to redeem premium cabin awards is going up dramatically in most cases. So the QF FF members have been caching in their saved FF points on the business and first class awards that are going up in cost. As a result, there is very little availability for QF premium cabin awards left right now.
This brings back memories from 2003 when AA enhanced (increased) the number of miles required to claim all types of awards. However, with a moderate amount of friendly persistence to AA reservations, I was able to redeem 2 biz class awards over Easter 2004 with the following routing: GCM-MIA-LAX-SYD-AKL-LAX-MIA-GCM. These were ticketed at the end of July 2003 for 105k miles each (ah, the good ole days!).
But it is true that premium award availability on QF trans-pac has always been difficult except for very last minute bookings. Regrettably, it now appears to be even more of an issue for the reasons that
NM has stated as well as the number of premium seats declined in biz when the SkyBed product was introduced.