makrom

I have upcoming A380 flights in C and want to try to upgrade one of them to F with Qcredits.
I tried online under "Redeem Qmiles/Qcredits". When entering my booking ref, I get this:


When I select the inane Businesstonull() and continue, I get this:


Is there another convenient way to check for availability and get upgrades?

Dschaimz

The best way is to call the QRPC Hotline. If you are Platinum, you stand a good chance they will open up a seat for you. (they have done this for me twice, however refused when I was Gold) If you are not, and you want to check availability before you call, go to the "Book Flight" section on the QR website, enter your flight dates & destination, click "Search" and then use the "switch" to set "Book with Qmiles". If you can see award availability in F which is not marked as "Q2" (means you need to pay double Qmiles for an award seat) then that means there will also be availability for upgrades (usually). Good luck!

makrom

@Dschaimz: Thanks for your reply. Yeah there is regular award availability. Was thinking of calling the hotline next, it's just my experience when dealing with QR to always try online first as much as possible before dealing with their hotlines.
I think they even charge something extra these days when booking awards through the hotline rather than online (not that I am that stingy, but no need to waste money without getting any benefits).

toz100

I checked upgrade availability from C to F the way you described and just got "Q2" as an answer. Then I checked this QR-flight on BAEC (other carriers) and got 6 seats availability. I am Plat if this should matter but I think it shouldn't in this case. Sounds not consistent for me.

Dschaimz

This is a ME Airline. Consistency is not one of their virtues. Still love every flight though!

makrom

I booked our upgrades through the QRPC hotline now. At first, they were only able to upgrade the whole trip, which is inane if first class is only available for one leg, but they sent it to a different department that was able to upgrade single legs.
They still charged their new booking fee of 30€ (15€ per upgrade). This was somewhat annoying. I totally understand why QR tries to encourage people to use their online platform rather than their staffed points of contact. But due to obvious bugs, there was no way to book it online and they offered no option to fix that problem.
I am not complaining about having to pay 15€ for a 1st class upgrade, it's just annoying that we get forced into paying these fees due to their faulty online platform and QRs inability to address these problems. It's not a big deal and I'm not going to raise a fuss about it, it's just another one of those tiny SNAFUs that are so idiosyncratic for QR's CR.