My partner and I are doing a business class Australia trip in February with a night in Hong Kong. I booked him on an award ticket back in March (as soon as the flights were loaded). I waited to book my matching Circle Pacific until last month, not wanting to spend the $5300 that far ahead. I was able to get matching flights in D class except for one QF flight HKG-SYD. On that flight, QF is showing J9 C9 D0. So he's ticketed on the QF flight, I'm waitlisted on the QF flight, and I'm booked on a CX flight that leaves an hour and a half earlier.

QF tells me they can't see where I am in the queue, and their revenue management people won't look at the flight to consider clearing the waitlist until two weeks out. The AA RTW desk says I can ticket my circle pacific with the QF flight waitlisted, but I have to either do it as a paper ticket, or drop the waitlisted flight, issue it as an e-ticket, and then add the waitlisted flight back in, which will lose my place in the queue.

I can't switch him to match my flight because there's no award availability.

Questions:

1. how stupid was I to wait to book my matching circle pacific?
2. what are the odds I'll be able to get on the QF flight?
3. what are the odds there will be upstairs seats for us if I do get on the QF flight? (we're actually going HKG-BNE, but I booked it HKG-SYD, SYD-BNE just to get a 747 since we love the upper deck)
4. are there any drawbacks to a paper ticket for this?
5. any advice?

Only 1.5 hours difference - you can wait in a restaurant upon arrival for him.

Not many drawbacks, QF and CX don't require ticket reissue after
a date change, and you can still view your QF (and unchanged CX) flights online. Just pick the tickets up a few days in advance in case there's a delay
issuing them (there probably will be).

tips:

• get QF to add your email address to your booking so you'll get notified in the event of flight changes to the QF flights
• if the paper tickets are handwritten then make sure they include all the taxes you have paid, especially PC1 and PC3, otherwise you may get hit again at the airport (we did get hit).
• Date changes you make to the CX flights won't be reflected on checkmytrip.com, when making CX changes get them to email the new itinerary to you.

I don't get why having it ticketed as an e-ticket wouldn't allow the waitlist to be maintained??? Why does the form of the ticket affect the reservation? Isn't this the whole point of the distinction between ticket and reservation/booking? the waitlist is in the reservation and if it clears your e-ticket has a valid segment HKG-SYD which can be applied to it. Is this some nuance with e-tickets I have not come across before?

And in any case, for Feb I wouldn't guess that the waitlist for D for that particular flight on that particular day would be very long, if any longer than just you on it.