Originally Posted by Aisle Seat H
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 to at least another allow 3 - 4 people each to burn 45,000/60,000/whatever miles to sit in the empty seats (still leaving a number of free seats in J). The cost, certainly compared to them using these miles for an award flight in Y or J, is negligable.
I agree completely with your post above. If there is a seat free and someone wants to upgrade using miles, QF should allow the upgrade. First of all, it helps reduce miles building up at a very small cost - remembering in this situation that QF was still in a position to sell the J and/or F seats to a potentially cash paying customer as they don't confirm mileage upgrade requests until the day of the flight on international services.
For a carrier that is so obessed with yeild management, you would have thought QF would have woken up to this. Their accounting practises have already been changed to reflect the positive benefit derived from miles being spent so this really is a potential win-win situation for QF. They already have half the equation right by restricting confirmation of an upgrade till the day of flight thus ensuring as many paying customers as possible have the opportunity to purchase J and F seats. You would think that on the day of a flight they would try to get as many upgrade requests fulfilled to reduce their potential liabilities.
I suspect that someone in yeild management still believes that relaxing their uber-tight upgrade policy may cause some WPs to use miles to upgrade international services on business flights rather than pay for a J or F fare - the risk of not getting a J seat is far too high for most premium passengers travelling for work to risk so personally I cannot see it really affecting their revenues.