My surprise is the different approaches to selling premium cabins. UA seems to expect that many people will buy a medium to high end WHY ticket and upgrade to Biz, or buy biz and upgrade to F. If I can do it less than 2 months out, I'm sure others can do it too. I even got a seat in the F cabin when 6 seats are already allocated.

My other surprise was the speed at which the general contact number was answered - and this did not require a FF number to be entered. It just was answered immediately (by their ICC) and efficiently handled. Sure beats the 30 min "on hold" from the TG contact number earlier in the day.

The moral for me was (as others have done with the move to AA) not to just accept everything that QF does with the FF program (although it has been good to me), but there are other alliances out there and can offer better frills - often unexpected.