Well, this is one of my other big issues I have with QF, as I eluded to in my previous post.

QF are quite remarkably stingy, by the general standard in the industry, with the amount of seats they make available for (international) miles-Ups. I am not sure any other carrier (that allow for Ups with miles) I have any knowledge of/have read about on FT is worst. og explained part of the rationale behind it, but in my opinion their current policy is absurd, and counter-productive.

And I'm not the only one who things so - on a flight a few months ago I (as a WP) was told at check-in that my request for an upgrade had not been sucessful. This despite the fact that I knew for a fact J was pretty empty. This was the third Y flights I had taken in a row that this had happened (one pre-May, this the second after [my successful one was on the flight after this one !]).

An hour or two into the flight the CSM came up to me to say hi, and so I asked him about it - he immediately asked me to follow him, and we sat in the crew seats in the area between Y and J chatting about it for some time.

He was very keen to do so because he himself was very annoyed about the policy, and was sick of having WPs/SGs etc asking him on many flights about why there were so many free seats in J yet QF were denying people upgrades that they actually wanted to 'pay' for with miles ! He explained how it was policy from on high, that he and others had passed on comments and their own views, but that they had little idea how QF decided so few seats could be made available. And there was nothing he could do about it of course.

It was all rather sureal - instead of me telling him how frustrating it was for a passenger, he did it for me !!! He told me that on the particular flight we were on there were still (if memory serves) 12 free seats in J, with a number of pax. (in addition to myself) having been denied an Up that they had requested. One or two others had been given Ups, but others, inc. more than one WP inc. me, had not been despite the 12 empty seats.

He, like me, could not understand why in this situation QF would 'leave' WPs at the back when there were so many free seats and when they were willing to use their hard-earned miles for the Up. We both agreed that it was right that they did not Op-Up everybody like other carriers do (and why they should of course not fill all 12 seats) but that it is very different when it is Ups paid for with miles.

What amazes me about the QF policy is that you would have thought they would LOVE us to burn miles on Ups. I totally understand them having pretty limited seats available for award redemption, but if a plane is gonna take off with 12 seats in J you would have though they would love at least another 4 - 5 people to each burn 45,000/60,000/whatever miles to sit in the empty seats (still leaving a number of free seats in J). The cost relative to other rewards, certainly compared to these people using these miles for an award flight in Y or J, is negligible.

And again its a PR thing - such policies alienate customers, and does not make you feel that your loyalty is appreciated. If I as a WP am so frustrated by the policy/reality, how frustrated must over 90% of QF FFs be with it ? This is not good business sense.