Steve32. The QF and CX beds, while not true dead-flat, get very very close (in the 4-6 degrees range). Frankly its difficult to tell that they are not exactly flat.
(they are definitely not your AA First class seats)

Agree with the above posters that in general the QF bed is more comfortable than BA.

If I was flying with elderly parents would lean towards the direct flights

None at all that I'm aware of. As far as CX is concerned, business class is business class. The fact that we had upgraded from 54H/K which actually have enough room for me to stretch out (unlike RBC) made it doubly annoying, and by the time I discovered the switch someone else had grabbed those seats, so I could only have "unupgraded" to non-legroom seats. Then when we got going even the tape loop was non-functional on one machine so that was 6(?) channels down. And the power at my seat didn't work, so I had to move away from my g/f in order to use my laptop.

To be fair, the crew were most apologetic (even more so to the guy in 11A who had booked in F, and who I assume did get some substantial compensation) and did everything they could, but at the end of the day I feel cheated of 50,000 AsiaMiles.

AA F seats are a lot more comfortable (both kinds are 100% flat and horizontal); in fact the AA FS is competitive with the QF/BA F seat, and not J. The one thing AA did right was in the design of their F seat for half the long-haul fleet (slowly being upgraded to be 100%).

Oh, very interesting. I hadn't heard that before about the chair/beds.

Looks like who/what I fly is more or less completely out of my hands. Last night we decided to drop Tasmania from the itinerary (wrong time of year to go with no flowers blooming), giving us more time and segments to play with.

So I went back to trying to leave Hong Kong after five days instead of the original planned four which was forced down to two to get into Australia in business class.

So, after literally 20-plus checks for routing from HKG to anywhere in Australia in business, finally managed one (after five day stopover in HKG) as yet partial HKG-KIX-CNS-... And that's where it's left. Arrive at 4:55am, and the next day isn't loaded into the system yet so I'll have to call back tomorrow to try to get from there to MEL. Of course I'll see if a more direct routing can happen on that day also, rather than flying all over the west side of the Pacific for a day and a half, burning up segments.

The AA rep was very impressed with my inventiveness and research coming up with alternative routings, and said she definately would write a report on the lack of business award availability despite my extreme flexability.

Thank you very much everyone.

Steve

If the availability were there, I would take it. I tried every routing through another Australian city, Singapore, Aukland, three or four places in Indonesia, Malasia, Manila, Thailand, etc. (I checked Taiwan and Viet Nam but they either didn't lead anyplace else or only connected to farther north.) Believe me, I had the oneworld pdf file for flights in front of me and I was scrolling back and forth looking for potential routings while the AA rep was typing in my latest routing suggestion checking for availability.

That routing through Bangkok even lost us two days in Hong Kong. My next day's efforts got us five days in Hong Kong, but an even worse routing via (so far) KIX (Osaka, Japan) and Cairns, Aus (and hopefully able to get through from there, but have to wait another day for the schedule to load up).

My Dad sparked up with Bangkok, and even floated the idea of trading Melbourne for Bangkok as a stopover (can't do both as that would drag us to 59 miles past the 25,000 mile Distance Zone 7 award we are going for).

If you guys have a good idea as to how I can try to get AA to get CX or QF revenue management to free up three business class seats on routes/days they have zero even at the full 330 max lead time for reserving the seats through oneworld, I'm all ears.

Thanks,

Steve

You know the answer, there is none -- particularly not 330 days in advance. CX will release seats within 2 weeks of the travel date, probably not before. QF will release seats for upgrades in that time frame, but probably not for awards.

I haven't checked, but KIX-CNS used to be operated by a sub-standard QF service, so it may not really be business class (no skybeds, for example). Not sure if all the japanese routes have been upgraded to the international long-haul standard yet.

You are right in that they are still being operated by another QF service. The AA rep wasn't sure that would be a valid route, but it was included on the oneworld schedule as one of their routes, so it should be valid; but you are right in that that does not guarantee that it's good. **The itinerary says "Qantas Airways operated by /Australian for Qantas"**


I would be perfectly willing to split my ticket from my parents and take another route/flight that arrived at the same destination within a reasonable time period, but unless we are willing to downgrade to economy, the award seats just aren't there.

One possibility I had floated is booking economy now and hoping that business awards seat availability eventually freed up, and then I could reticket the class upgrade without having to have all the segments re-checked from scratch. Certainly worth US$15 to reticket an upgrade, but it sounds like it won't ever become available. Frankly I was amazed at first that I managed to get business on the mid-week LHR-SYD flight from it's fuel stop in BKK, as the BA forum said that it was likely the most popular award flight of all BA's routes; but I guess we would have been filling seats of a family doing a stopover at BKK.

Thanks,

Steve

Thanks for the details of how the system actually runs. Lets me be better informed as to how I stand and therefore make more informed decisions as to how to "play this game."

Thank you very much,

Steve

I can tell you know, I would take a flight operated by Australian Airlines crew over a standard Qantas crew anyday. Australian Airlines and Jetconnect crew are long renowned for their wonderful service.

KIX-CNS will have the Qantas product, although will be crewed by the much cheaper (albeit better), Australian Airlines crew.

PER-NRT, CNS-NRT/NGO/KIX, SYD-CNS-NRT and BNE-CNS-NRT still feature the older Dreamtime product with the non-stop MEL-NRT, SYD-NRT and the MEL-NRT via SYD featuring A330-300s with Qantas' latest product - Skybed.

Summing up, I would have no hesitation in choosing a flight operated by AO crew (namely KIX-CNS), although the product on this route, while good, isn't as nice as the Skybeds featured on other Japan flights.

Cheers

Traveloguy, often Qantas will switch QF127/8 to 2-class 747-400s, so no real hassle unless you're in First Class. 747-300s often fly this route, and IIRC, QF even placed a warning about it in their Skybed rollout table not too long ago.

Cheers

I made HKG-SYD last September, and direct CX J awards did not even open within the 15 days threshold before the flight. I had to choose HKG-SIN-SYD instead, with BA for the SIN-SYD leg. Way too long (took us almost 18 hours...).
On our return trip we flew MEL-HKG in QF.

Personally, I found QF's product very good and now it ranks really high in my list.

CX was simply impressive, but you need to ensure the route is not served with "Regional Business Class".

I was taking a look at the HKG-KIX-CNS--MEL (or --SYD-MEL) routing, and while it may be all business class, it's also more than 24 hours of flying and mucking around airports--not the most inspiring thing to be doing on a vacation.

Rafft, you anticipated my next question.

What routing/airlines would people suggest would be not that unreasonable, and with at least a fair chance of being able to eventually upgrade to business by the time of taking the flight? In the meantime, I can book economy. I also thought maybe breaking up the "group" and myself taking a different flight(s) the same day might make it easier to grab award "upgrade" later (instead of a larger threesome on the same flight).

I guess one other point to take into consideration is the fact that that particular flight day will be 16 days into the itinerary, so if I can't upgrade a cabin on the same flight after I have started the itinerary, then even the two-week hurdle when more awards might get freed up won't help.

Otherwise, I guess the best alternative to just get that leg over with as fast as possible is to just take the economy award seats on the direct HKG-MEL (which will also save segments to use for later flexability), even though that's a 9+ hour flight. Discussed it with my parents last night, and they will defer to my judgement, but agreed that 9 hours in economy sounds better than 30 hours in business and airports.

More thanks for all your helpful input!

Steve

i have the same decision to make on an upcoming trip. any more recent thoughts on this question?