Just rang the friendly UA contact listed for Sydney (131777). Immediate answer from their ICC. I said "I have confirmed flights on xx April SEA-NRT-BKK in Business and I'd like to use my points to upgrade to First class". He said (after noises of a keyboard being pounded) "yes Sir, I can confirm your First class seats on both these flights - it will cost you 30,000 UA miles...(and so on).

A refreshing change to the QF lottery.

And the same can happen with AA flights too.

Not over the Pacific!

What status was your friend? The big thing about the lottery (other than allowing QF to manage short term profits - potentially at the expense of long term loyalty) is that status pax can call 3 dyas before the flight and trump the proles below them. It really depends what sort of traveller you are - long term planner with low status or high status short term planner...

I am not a fan of the way QF does the upgrades. I would rather know in advance if I have the upgrade or not. But when you do walk up to the gate and you get the good news it does make for a very pleasant night

Yeah, QF's upgrade policy sucks big time.

Perhaps they will bring back confirmed international upgrades with the "enahncements that are coming"

I'm sure they would love to offer them, just at double the cost or something

They could sweeten the deal by making it double the cost, but available on the cheap seats. I'd be up for that...

Haven't tried it but the website says:

ONE-WAY UPGRADE*
To/From North America to Japan/Northern China
From:
Discount Y 25,000+$300
Y 15,000
J 25,000

It's not true? Not confirmable? Similar to og's flight.

And even better, you would have found F or C award availability on those flights and you could have upgraded the UA flight using your LH miles. Try that on a QF flight with your AA miles....

This be true ...

In all honesty It's not something I'm particularly concerned about, especially when posted in the FT Qantas Frequent Flyer forum. FWIW, ozstamps does better than that, I believe he looks nearly a year in advance, ascertaining those direct UA flights betwixt the USA and Oz (that's where og lives I believe) having availability of immediate upgrades and upgrades immediately after purchasing them.

Fine for him and og when most of their flights are overseas. Not so good for me - I travel where I have status, 'tis far more comfortable .

And with Star (slowly) introducing cross alliance confirmed upgrades too...

It is pretty much rolled out. The glaring exception is UA Mileage Plus. However upgrades on the alliance (as opposed to FFP's home carrier(s) are expensive.

My surprise is the different approaches to selling premium cabins. UA seems to expect that many people will buy a medium to high end WHY ticket and upgrade to Biz, or buy biz and upgrade to F. If I can do it less than 2 months out, I'm sure others can do it too. I even got a seat in the F cabin when 6 seats are already allocated.

My other surprise was the speed at which the general contact number was answered - and this did not require a FF number to be entered. It just was answered immediately (by their ICC) and efficiently handled. Sure beats the 30 min "on hold" from the TG contact number earlier in the day.

The moral for me was (as others have done with the move to AA) not to just accept everything that QF does with the FF program (although it has been good to me), but there are other alliances out there and can offer better frills - often unexpected.