Obtaining Business Class seating on Qantas
 

Looking for any suggestions here. I am a Platinum Elite with Continental, and have been for the previous 7 years. I have over 1.2 Million miles saved, and my wife and son are both silver elite. Trying to use miles to get to NZ/Australia in Business Class from Tampa. Looking for next May/June, but seems impossible. Also have almost 1 Million miles in Membership Rewards with AmEx. Any suggestions, withouth flying 40 hours to go the distance?

QF releases 2 business class seats per flight, initially.

Your dates are off-peak, and if all you need is 2 seats, this should not be a problem.

I'm not sure, but you can probably sign up for a QF frequent flyer account, and then use their website to search for availability. If you see some, then call the CO partner reward desk, and hope that they'll give it to you (I think they should, but don't know if they make all award availability available to all partners).

The alternative is to sign up for an Expertflyer subscription, and you can search there for "U" inventory, which is for business class awards.

Keep in mind that there are a number of QF flights to check: SFO-SYD, LAX-SYD/MEL/AKL/BNE (and also JFK-SYD, but you're probably better off routing via the west coast). I think I've heard that AKL and BNE are generally easier to get availability.

I'm not sure if the CO award allows onward travel within Australia, but I would just focus on getting TO Australia/NZ, and then you can always buy tickets for the intra-oz flights. I'm also not sure whether the award would include travel on CO from your hometown to the QF gateway (LAX/SFO/JFK).

Since you have so many miles, you might want to consider looking for a First Class award, it's probably one of the best values in the OnePass program, for 135K r/t I believe. "Z" inventory (for first class) will probably be harder to find than "U" inventory, particularly for two seats on the same flight, and the only flights with F service are to SYD/MEL. But it's worth a try!

Also, try searching in the QF forum for more tips and hints, and there are probably some posts in the AA forum as well. Good luck!

This is good advice that has worked for me. Join the QF FF program, hunt for availability and when you find it call CO immediately.
I belive that the # of FC seats per flight is 2. Its rumored that the number of BC seats is 4.
Good luck

Thanks for the advice and insight on the seat limits. I failed to mention there will be 4 total traveling, so even finding 2 in FC and 2 in BC would be absolutely fine. I know my wife would not mind a few hours of break from our sons, who still enjoy staying up all night on long hauls enjoying everything other than sleep! I'll try both the above suggestions and scour the Qantas site looking for availability!

Would seriously doubt QF has two FC seats open for FFers on every flight. They only have 14 seats in the cabin and usually when I've flown QF on trunk routes such as LHR-SIN-SYD or LAX-SYD it is quite full with people waitlisted.

Would your group split up? One F traveling separately? Also check some non-trunk routings - SFO-SYD or LAX-MEL. I've also heard about people snagging J and F seats from JFK when there were no seats on the same day from LAX even though the plane goes JFK-LAX-SYD. The same thing happened to me years ago when BA flew SAN-LAX-LHR. Couldn't get F seats out of LAX but SAN was easy so I just drove down and picked up the SAN-LAX-LHR instead of LAX-LHR.

I think QF tries to allocate seats by gateway on a per week/month basis - not per flight. So check off travel days such as Tuesday or Wednesday going Down Under - because you loose a day these are low days for business travel.

In addition to JFK and SFO - also check out HNL - you could fly via IAH or EWR and connect to QF there.

I was actually able to book 2 QF F seats awards and this multiple times (SFO-SYD; LAX-MEL; LAX-SYD) - as I had to change my original plans. While it's tough to get them, following the advices given by fellow FTers helped me a lot (especially you Channa ^ ).

I definetely second the recommendation to create a QF FF account and check the availability online before calling CO to book the awards.

Definitely a max of 2 FC seats. I have seen them searching to QF rewards site, although difficult to find. I myself redeemed an F award JFK-LAX-MEL-SYD-LAX-JFK last year. Its not easy but doable. I would NOT expect any luck around holiday times.

The biggest hurdle is the fact that QF members get avaialbility 360 days out. Most of the times around holidays are snapped up by them.

CO, US, AA etc have tp wait until 330 days out.

Needless to say, if you are looking for Next June, you may already be too late. 330 days from next June 30 was roughly July 30, 2006. Right now, the window should be open to roughly July 15, 2007 (roughly 330 days). Incidnetally, this was about the time of my trip.

This isn't correct: CO flyers definitely get a few extra days over US and AA. My most recent trip was booked between 330 and 340 days out for a ROC-ATL-LAX-SYD, SYD-ASP, ASP-MEL-LAX-ATL-ROC itinerary. You can hold the outbound for something like two weeks if you find it available, then book the return when it becomes available. This is for flights in late June 2007 and was booked more than two weeks ago. (We could get 2 F seats MEL-LAX but not LAX/SFO-Australia, so we went for J instead.)

Tip: it's a lot easier to find DL inventory within the US than NW or CO if you're booking more than 330 days out. You can search DL award inventory on http://www.nwa.com/asia. DL still seem to have the good old-fashioned 'release at least one award seat in F at the beginning of the booking window' system, which CO definitely does not.

You are correct, CO usually gets availability 7-10 days ahead of AA and US, because of Sabre's limitations, where AA and US reside.

If you are departing from the east coast, consider connecting with QF 108 from JFK-LAX.

....remebering that QF 108/107 operates only 5 days a week (no Tue/Thur transcon service).