Upgrade Question
 

I could be way off the mark here, but i have a question about upgrading on my LAX-BNE flight.
I was talking to a colleague at work a little while back, and he told me that Qantas has coupons you can purchase to upgrade from Economy to Business. Can anyone confirm this, and if you can, could you please explain how? We are going on our honeymoon and would obviously love to be in business class :)

Thanks

Your colleague has no idea.

You can waitlist to upgrade using your QF points. Your pecking order on the upgrade list will depend on your QF status firstly, and then when you were placed on the waitlist, and finally on how many seats QF decide to release for upgrades.

Unless you have a fairly high QF status, I don't rate your chances overly highly.

Welcome to the forum, btw.

Dave

The only coupon you could buy is a LAX-BNE ticket in J. QF doesn't have any on departure upgrades, coupons etc other than using their own FF points. Unlike *A you can't even use FF points of another OW carrier to upgrade.
So unless you have lots of points and a high QF FF status your chances of an upgrade are slim.
Why don't you take AC's new 777 from YVR to SYD and the a cheap flight up to BNE?

Slightly OT here but why the requirement for lots of points? Surely you would need enough to 'pay' for the upgrade but no more?

I understand the need for status and how that works but not the need for excess points.

This is of interest to me because I am hoping to get an upgrade early next year (NRT-MEL) and will have just enough points at the earliest possible date to apply and SG status should help.

Because QF's upgrades are generally considered to cost a lot of points compared with upgrade options on some other carriers.

The OP will need 72,000 QF FF points per person for a one-way upgrade from discount economy (anything other than Y booking class) to business class.

Of course you only need the required points, not more. The reason why I stressed the lots of points issue was that people from other frequent flyer programs are often shocked when they see how many points you need on QF (and the OP seems to be new to QF).

I just booked SYD-PPT on NZ in business and needed 45k LH miles return. With QF you would need 120k points. Both LH and QF points are equally hard or easy to get for me so the earn/burn ratio is shocking on QF.

Actually the upgrade priority is based on the status of the person requesting the upgrade and not the passenger travelling. Therefore if the OPs colleague is a WP, their changes could be somewhat improved.

That said, I doubt transpac upgrades are easy to get even if you your high up the status food chain considering the loads QF manages to get on those flights.

That is not correct according to Qantas Flight Upgrades.

Thanks NM and DownUnderFlyer for your prompt and informative answers.

Much appreciated.

H

Sounds like a revision as it used to work the way I described. :(

It certainly is a change this year. It used to work this way (undocumented) but Qantas changed it some months ago, and made it clear in the T&C's.

Perhaps there were too many uncle WP's upgrading their "rellos" ...

Another downgrade of benefits... :(

Thanks for the heads up - at least I know know it is not worth giving my miles away to rellos anymore. ;)

I know the current T&C says its now different, but has anyone actually found it to work in the way described in the T&C? It would not be the first time the computer program logic did not match the legalese in the T&Cs.