Skippy_kangaroo

I have a job interview in Washington, DC next week and have been booked on flights from Sydney to there and back by my prospective employer in economy (H) [Flights on Thursday arriving 1735, interview 9am Friday]. I am contemplating upgrading on the outbound SYD-LAX leg if possible so I arrive in marginally better shape. I am currently Platinum with Qantas.

Will the fact that it is only a week before the flights effectively mean I've got Buckley's of getting an upgrade? Would I be better aiming for PE rather than business? Any suggestions on maximising my chances of getting an upgrade? (Any suggestions on whether it's worth it?)

(One wrinkle at the moment is that the booking has jsut gone in and hasn't been ticketed or paid for - as best I can judge - so I can't yet submit an online upgrade request. I presume this will work out as the booking is processed and ticketed by their travel agent.)

serfty

Some years ago Qantas noted in the QFF T&C's that time of upgrade request had bearing over upgrade priority. This is no longer so indicated.

Based on recent anecdotes and comment, it appears that the following attributes of a booking comprise in order the main determinants for priority these days:

1. Frequent Flyer Status
2. Booking Class (≈Fare Paid)
3. Years of QFF membership

Whether time of request is still used is not publicly known, but almost certainly comes after those.

I would put the request in for both PE and Business. Based on the above, being in H class would put you ahead of the WP's not booked in PE or Y or B classes.

DownUnderFlyer

I think with a job interview waiting at the other end trying to get an upgrade is worth it.
The flights don't show any I class anymore which is not surprising but they still have plenty of seats in Biz so you might be lucky.

[KVS Availability Tool 5.8.0/Diamond - Sabre: Availability/GTC/US-LTR]
But, why would you want to work for someone who is only paying for Y?

Skippy_kangaroo

If I put a request in for both will it all work out sensibly? There's no chance they will grant me both and charge for both?

serfty

Unlikely; last month I had requests for J&W LHR-SIN and SIN-MEL.

The LHR flight went to PE and the MEL flight went to J; correct quantities of points were charged in each case.

I believe they assess the upgrades in the following sequence:

1. J to F
2. W to J
3. Y to J
4. Y to W

I you have a Y to J/W request, then 3 will be assessed for you first and if not successful, then 4 will be processed in turn.

AnonymousCoward

I am somewhat skeptical about that order, as I'm WP, and have booked quite a few Y/H fares from SYD-SIN vv. in the past 18 months, and not had much success at getting upgrades. Now, it may be that there are people further ahead of me, and it may be that QF are simply not permitting the upgrades, but I suspect that order of application still has some bearing (just based on my circumstances), since I book fairly close to flying (typically 1-2 weeks beforehand). For PE, I'm usually in W (sometimes R), and again upgrade success has been mixed. For business I'm always in D, and upgrade success has been reasonably good.

Skippy_kangaroo

I guess I'll find out on Thursday. I'll post how it goes here.

Apparently there is some difficulty with their online system at the moment so I put in a business class upgrade request on the phone. I decided not to request PE as well because I consider the quality of sleep in PE to be very similar to the quality of sleep in economy with a window to lean against. (But I welcome contrary views if people want to make them.)

An interesting aspect of all this is that the points earn on this flight (with 100% platinum bonus) is around 30,000 SYD-LAX-SYD plus 5 or 10K LAX-IAD-LAX (do you get bonus status points for QF codeshares run on AA planes?) which is pretty close to the PE upgrade cost of 45K for the SYD-LAX leg. If it weren't for the uncertainty about the request being granted, I'd say it looks like a very efficient way to fly and use points.

serfty

Skeptical you may be. At least there's another few data points.

Blackcloud

QF status bonus applies to QF BA and AA codes.

AnonymousCoward

Perhaps. Can you point me to some? I've seen the above list stated many times, but I can't recall much evidence to support it.

serfty

I am aware of two SG on the same flight from Asia last year. One booked a long time before (V class) and put a request in at T-90 days; another paid somewhat more in booking three weeks out (M class) and put their upgrade request in immediately.

The latter was upgraded to Business, the former to PE.

In any case, I would still recommend any who wish to upgrade to apply as the earliest possible moment.

Skippy_kangaroo

Upgrade successful.

Doing seat selection now there were still a few other seats left as well.

og

Good luck with the interview

Skippy_kangaroo

Mission successful

The flight out was not full - there were spare seats in all classes. This probably affected my upgrade success.

The flight back, however, was so full they had people strapped onto the roof racks. My bag also failed to make it back with me (see the other thread about baggage coverage that I started somewhat presciently). That's what you get when an engine blows up and you ground your fleet of A380s.

NZ_Flyer

This does seem to be the situation. A WP friend who had an H fare SYD-JNB to get to the world cup applied for his upgrade Y->J the day before travel and it cleared well before check-in and he was able to select seats (apparently only 2-3 seats free on the seat selector). He'd been a member since 1996 and a WP for 3-4 years in a row.

Does anyone have any opinions as to whether your employer affiliations would count? This friend also works for travels extensively for a large Australian bank and this is in his profile + QF would know via their CRM software.