axelrose

I am flying from LAX to SYD in August for my honeymoon. My fiancee (and soon to be wife) will be flying a lot inside of Australia as well, so we booked a Qantas AirPass through our travel agent (I know, I know- I rarely use them myself). Does anyone have some tips on landing an upgrade from coach to business on the flight from LAX to SYD? I had planned on playing the sympathy card about my recent nuptuals, but am open to any suggestions.

Thanks!

Starwood Lurker

Welcome to Flyertalk!

You might want to post this in the Qantas forum instead of the TalkBoard forum. It would probably attract more attention there.

Sincerely,


William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

[email protected]

missydarlin

excellent idea William Moving post now...

og

(1) Have status with QF - preferably Platinum; (2) don't travel on QF 11 or 12; (3) don't fly on a weekend; (4) follow the instructions on the QF web site on how to request an upgrade using QF points or status credits; (5) pay the difference at the airport; (6) book on a flight with almost no capacity on WHY and hope for an op-up; (7) expect nothing and you won't be disappointed; (8) try to pre-allocate a WHY seat you can cope with in case the 99.99% chance that you don't get the upgrade actually happens.

Wongo

QF, worst airlines to hope for an Op-up, Anyone with me on that?

NM

(9) facing west, place left index finger in right ear, lift left leg off the ground, tilt head back staring at the heavens and pray profusely an din a loud voice for the entire time you are standing in the check-in queue.

This one is yet to work for me, but its fun trying and watching everyone stare strangely at you, praying they don't end up sitting next to you for the long flight.

thadocta

QF, the airline which doesn't upgrade just because the day of the week ends in a 'Y'. QF, the airline that thinks if you want to fly in J pay for a J seat. QF, a profitable airline (one of the few), although not as profitable as it should be given its capitalisation.

Dave
(Qantas shareholder)

Dave Noble

Why should one have any expectation of being involuntarily upgraded? Qantas seem to be pretty good at inventory management to not have to do it except under odd situations. e.g. if there has been cancellations and the like which unexpectedly add to the numbers of passengers.

I find it stranger that some airlines end up doing it seemingly more frequently; this just suggests to me a poor planning on their side

I have had more upgrades on QF than other airlines, but then again, I havent used many other airlines recently.

Dave

turtlemichael

Maybe they do it as a conscious marketing thing to gain your loyalty. The marginal cost to the airline is next to zero and I'll choose one carrier over the other if there is that possibliity of an upgrade, all else being equal. In September I am flying HKG-SFO in J. I wonder why I chose CX?

Globaliser

That's a fallacy when it's taken to the lengths that some carriers do. When the op-ups (or other free upgrades) are so frequent and so dependable in return for your "loyalty" that those who would otherwise buy premium class tickets stop doing so, the marginal cost of adopting this policy is suddenly HUGE.

There's a separate argument that if you do it as a conscious "marketing" thing to gain "loyalty", all you're doing is bribing people to pick you over the competition. It may work so long as you continue the bribery. But that sort of "loyalty" stops the instant the bribes stop.

turtlemichael

Disagree Globaliser. I will buy the class I want and hope for an upgrade. I'm not going to buy a lower class than I otherwise would buy on the mere possibility. I have been op-uped 30% of the time on CX in 10 flights. I have never been op-uped on QF once in more than 300 flights in the last 5 years.

Emotive terms like "bribing" for loyalty are a touch non-sensical. All marketers aim to get you to use their product and keep using it. I will use the carrier which suits me best in terms of timing, connections, service, price. And if there is the possibility of an upgrade so much the better. My loyalty to use QF come hell or high water disappeared on May 25th.

NM

I think there is a big difference bewteen hoping for an op-up on an airline like CX, and expecting an op-up as many members of USA-based FF programs have to do. I have several colleagues in the land of N-registered aircraft who never pay anything more than the cheapest available coach fare and always fly up front. Yes, they fly a lot, but there is no incentive at all for them to even pay YUP type fares in order to fly domestic F.

What happens with their choice of airline is no op-ups. They will always fill the front cabin with their elite FF members who request an upgrade (no cost), even if the rear cabin is half empty. That type of upgrading is not going to provide any incentive for their most frequent flyers to buy anything other than the cheapest available fare. The occasional op-up when it permits the airline to squeeze on another fare paying pax further back, is very nice when it happens.

I pay for the class I want to fly (WHY on domestic flights, J for interational). But if the airlines needs to op-up someone, then I am very pleased if they choose me.

So I can only assume that when QF needs to op-up someone on the flights that I am flying, there must be other people on the flight more deserving than me. Then again, their policy seems to work. I buy J for international flights because I don't want to travel in WHY and I know I cannot rely on being op-uped from WHY to J, and flying WHY does not earn me enough FF points to pay for upgrades on every flight. It also means I retain Plat status, hence improving my chances on successful upgrade waitlisting on the occasional 3-class flights I take. So I really don't give them much chance for an op-up these days. Any time I am on a 3-class QF flight I will waitlist for an upgrade and my success there is considerable.

So I guess that is another reason for few op-ups on QF. When they need to op-up, they can provide the upgrade to members who have waitlisted to upgrade with points/UCs.

Overall, I think QF has got the upgrade policy pretty right. But I really did appreciate my CX op-up from J to F on HKG-LAX earlier this week.

fly747first

This is a highly profitable route for Qantas, upgrades are rare and very hard to get.

Wongo

Op-Up I see a few things
#1 Reward for Loyalty
#2 Try to delight High revenue customers to their airline
#3 Super booked up flight
#4 Errrr, the Checkin person just made your day (random op-up for no reason at all)

Give me an exit row on a Ultra long haul and I'll be as happy as an Op-up. I hate sitting in the middle of the plane.

Aus_Mal

There were a few op-ups happening on QF domestic flights today. But as is fairly normal for the op-ups they only occured because of operating reasons.

One 767 flying from Syd-Cns went u/s. This meant that they had to move one of the 767's that fly between Mel and Syd to this route instead.

Net result = cancellation of several Mel/Syd/Mel flights.

There were also some flow on problems (I think) that meant a couple of Mel-Adl-Mel flights were cancelled. I believe they may have moved a plane from that route to the Mel-Syd one to assist with easing the passenger congestion (or maybe Adl was a route that the cancelled flight went to...)

So when you have 2 plane loads of pax being moved onto one flight then upgrades can happen and did. I believe the preference was for Plats to be upgraded with some Gold's where it was convenient to help seat families together.

So, yes upgrades do happen - but by no means can they be counted on. It does help quite a bit of you are a Plat or at least a Gold status with Qantas or the equivalent One World Status.

Of course there can be random op-ups when a check-in person gets the descretion to op-up or when a manager feels that you are worthy but I would definately be counting on sitting in the Y cabin all the way back from LAX.