What is the actual QF policy regarding the number of seats available for upgrade awards? If the flight shows J8 then can (potentially) eight people be successful with their upgrade request, or does it depend on a cheaper business allocation (say D or I)? If the former, presumably even NBs can snag upgrades with judicious use of something like KVS or ExpertFlyer.

J8 means that only 8 seats are available for purchase. QF may well fly them empty. They are not going to give the market place the impression that they will give away seats or let WHY passengers know that it is easy to upgrade. They wouldn't get people to pay for them if this was the case.

As for an actual policy for seat availability, QF knows that seats can sell at several hours before the flight so they will (always?) leave empty seats to cater for those who are paying top dollar for them. It's a dark science and QF certainly won't tell you how they work it out!

OK, I fly long haul over 50 times a year, therefore, as most of it is on 1W and QF card related, I get WP status fairly easily. However, I am getting rather tired these days. I have just done a CPH-LHR-HKG-side trip Taiwan-SYD-AKL-SYD-CBR-MEL-HKG-LHR-CPH run in a couple of weeks. Nothing special about that. I was able to earn around 60,000 points for it with status and cabin bonus in J booking. I burnt 60,000 miles on J to F from LHR to HKG and MEL to HKG. HKG to LHR was with BA. I planned on the day flight from HKG to SYD but ended up on the night flight in J.

If the route is quiet, then you can get the success. The system was showing confirmed for upgrade up to a day in advance, although QF did not tell me. I have my spies. However, by not telling me, then my sleep patterns have to change as I have never managed to sleep in the J seat yet.

The sector that I did not burn on, HKG to SYD had approximately 12 requests for gate upgrades. Say 4 J to F and at least 8 Y to J. I have no idea how many were successful requests, merely that they were handwritten on a form on the gate agent's desk. May be these were successful and more had applied, I do not know.

However, on routes that they fill in J routinely, then you have very little chance. For London, the 29/30 does not seem to be full all of the time, but is getting more popular. I do not know about the SYD-LAX runs as I must route through SCL these days, when heading across the Pacific.

I have yet to have success with upgrades....but then I am only a lowly silver.

3 from 3.

SYD-HKG
HKG-SYD
SYD-BKK

All Y-J.

Now if I was to try for SYD-LHR, or SYD-LAX, somehow I think my ratio would be a lot less !

5 from 6 on upgrades LHR-MEL-LHR, 3 Y to J and 2 J to F using UC's or Miles, ^
But have never managed to get a long haul miles redemption on suitable flights with QF

Well, this is one of my other big issues I have with QF, as I eluded to in my previous post.

QF are quite remarkably stingy, by the general standard in the industry, with the amount of seats they make available for (international) miles-Ups. I am not sure any other carrier (that allow for Ups with miles) I have any knowledge of/have read about on FT is worst. og explained part of the rationale behind it, but in my opinion their current policy is absurd, and counter-productive.

And I'm not the only one who things so - on a flight a few months ago I (as a WP) was told at check-in that my request for an upgrade had not been sucessful. This despite the fact that I knew for a fact J was pretty empty. This was the third Y flights I had taken in a row that this had happened (one pre-May, this the second after [my successful one was on the flight after this one !]).

An hour or two into the flight the CSM came up to me to say hi, and so I asked him about it - he immediately asked me to follow him, and we sat in the crew seats in the area between Y and J chatting about it for some time.

He was very keen to do so because he himself was very annoyed about the policy, and was sick of having WPs/SGs etc asking him on many flights about why there were so many free seats in J yet QF were denying people upgrades that they actually wanted to 'pay' for with miles ! He explained how it was policy from on high, that he and others had passed on comments and their own views, but that they had little idea how QF decided so few seats could be made available. And there was nothing he could do about it of course.

It was all rather sureal - instead of me telling him how frustrating it was for a passenger, he did it for me !!! He told me that on the particular flight we were on there were still (if memory serves) 12 free seats in J, with a number of pax. (in addition to myself) having been denied an Up that they had requested. One or two others had been given Ups, but others, inc. more than one WP inc. me, had not been despite the 12 empty seats.

He, like me, could not understand why in this situation QF would 'leave' WPs at the back when there were so many free seats and when they were willing to use their hard-earned miles for the Up. We both agreed that it was right that they did not Op-Up everybody like other carriers do (and why they should of course not fill all 12 seats) but that it is very different when it is Ups paid for with miles.

What amazes me about the QF policy is that you would have thought they would LOVE us to burn miles on Ups. I totally understand them having pretty limited seats available for award redemption, but if a plane is gonna take off with 12 seats in J you would have though they would love at least another 4 - 5 people to each burn 45,000/60,000/whatever miles to sit in the empty seats (still leaving a number of free seats in J). The cost relative to other rewards, certainly compared to these people using these miles for an award flight in Y or J, is negligible.

And again its a PR thing - such policies alienate customers, and does not make you feel that your loyalty is appreciated. If I as a WP am so frustrated by the policy/reality, how frustrated must over 90% of QF FFs be with it ? This is not good business sense.

I agree completely with your post above. If there is a seat free and someone wants to upgrade using miles, QF should allow the upgrade. First of all, it helps reduce miles building up at a very small cost - remembering in this situation that QF was still in a position to sell the J and/or F seats to a potentially cash paying customer as they don't confirm mileage upgrade requests until the day of the flight on international services.

For a carrier that is so obessed with yeild management, you would have thought QF would have woken up to this. Their accounting practises have already been changed to reflect the positive benefit derived from miles being spent so this really is a potential win-win situation for QF. They already have half the equation right by restricting confirmation of an upgrade till the day of flight thus ensuring as many paying customers as possible have the opportunity to purchase J and F seats. You would think that on the day of a flight they would try to get as many upgrade requests fulfilled to reduce their potential liabilities.

I suspect that someone in yeild management still believes that relaxing their uber-tight upgrade policy may cause some WPs to use miles to upgrade international services on business flights rather than pay for a J or F fare - the risk of not getting a J seat is far too high for most premium passengers travelling for work to risk so personally I cannot see it really affecting their revenues.

If an upgrade has been requested and unfortunately not granted......are you able to buy one with cash? If so......do you have to upgrade the whole ticket.....or can you just upgrade the sector you are flying on that day?

Also the price of the upgrade.............is that calculated as the cost of the cheapest available business class fare minus the price you paid for your WHY class?

Final question re purchasing at the airport..........where is the last place you can do it? Does it have to be when you check in..........or mull it over and then sort it out from the QC etc?

I've never seen QF offer cash upgrades (like VS, BA, CX do on some routes, mostly to match VS). On QF you have to buy up the ticket, which means reissue to the new fare and rules. This takes time and wouldn't be possible at the last minute (as you board, for example). What sectors can be upgraded, or only one, depends on the specific ticket and fare rules, but there is no advantage over buying the upgraded class initially and it is likely to cost more. Not really a practical approach and current QF policies actively discourage it. QF is astonishing this way -- I was once on standby F, not an upgrade, and half hour before flight departure QF could not figure out how to charge my credit card (many thousands of dollars) and get me on the flight 30 minutes later. And that was in SYD (or perhaps because it was in SYD). Sometimes QF acts like it is a privilege to give them money, and be sure to do it at their convenience.

It may well be that QF sees the cost to them of administering upgrades at the gate (as opposed to the "computer" doing it at 24 hrs prior to departure) is greater than the gain to them of SLF buring miles / SCs to get the UG.

Interestingly UA has started to do this in a BIG way in recent months. On most It'l routes.

You often get offered a few 100$$ option to upgrade even at auto check-in machines. And certainly at human check-in it is common on lightly booked flights. Sign of the times.

A SYD-LAX runs $A500 most times it seems.

Is there a difference between the credits, which must be confirmed before hand, and the mile burning, which is done on the day? I would have thought that the mile burning on the day makes their life easier to claim back some of the millions of miles on the balance sheet. In addition, they will get some op-up mile burners, where they would have given the upgrade but now they get the miles for it as well.

No difference as far as usage goes whether international or Oz Domestic.

UC's or points should be deducted around the time your upgrade is confirmed. According to the T&C's, for international upgrades this is when you "check in".

Interesting point though... The last remaining UC's should be expiring in just over 1 month.

I have 2 that are valid till Jan 2007 / March 2007 (I think).

"Upgrade credits earned before 25 May 2005 will remain valid for use up to 24 months from their date of issue."

So technically they may still be around for another 13 months or so.