Forgive the possibly stupid question, but how does one check reward availability on Qantas, so that you can buy (Equiv of) WT+ and upgrade to CW?

The BA site makes it so easy, but from what I can work gather you have to pay for you seat with Qantas and then hope that availbility might come up nearer the time.
Is there any way to look now for and have the results show like BA, as in 'There are 5 rewards seats left'.

I'm looking to fly from DXB to SYD/MEL direct.

TIA ^

You cannot use BA miles to upgrade on Qantas, so is moot

If you have Qantas points, then you can book a premium economy seat and then request an upgrade; the upgrade request will either be granted sometime within the day before the flight or will not be granted at all

There are no confirmed at time of booking upgrades offered internationally on Qantas

Ah ok, well that's answered that then. Thanks

There is no way though I'm going to book a ticket and hope there is a small chance I may get the upgrade I want to use points for.

What about Cathay Pacific?

You can only use Avios to upgrade on BA, IB and AA

(on IB and AA, you need to be in high fare buckets I believe, so I suspect it would rarely be worth it)

Okey dokes.

Do you know how the Cathay Pacific upgrade program work though? Is it the same as BA, or the same as Qantas?

Do you have Asia Miles or enrolled in Marco Polo?

Yes and yes, well will have soon - I've got a large number of MR points to put somewhere, but don't want to put them in CX if they operate a similar reward seat programme as Qantas as opposed to BA.

I have found that as a BA Gold there is a great ratio of OpUp on CX from Prem Eco to Business.

I have taken 8 sectors with them in the last 4 months and been upgraded on four, so if you are rolling the dice for an upgrade, good odds on CX!

These flights have been from DXB and RUH to MEL - so you are on a similar route.

Not keen on rolling the dice at any point, regardless of how good the odds are. I want a definite seat, as per BA. If there is no availability on a date then I will change the date, that's not an issue, but ideally I want to know that when I've paid for my Premium Economy seat I've got the upgrade to Business already confirmed.

No idea I'm afraid!

CX has confirmed upgrades for its members

At the time of booking? ie can I ring and book the return flight and get the upgrade all on the phone in one call?

If this is so, how do I check for upgrade availability?

Thanks

Not trying to be funny here, but wouldn't this be a better question for the CX forum?

Possibly, but it's not solely about CX - I'm trying to work out which of BAs partners has the best/easiest upgrade system, so instead of making 12 identical posts I've made one all encompassing.

I was just hoping that there would be at least one other airline that does it

To be honest, you don't even need the questions - for CX, the answer to all your questions above are in the CX sticky threads (or for that matter on the Asia Miles website which gives you very precise conditions on what flights can be upgraded, from what buckets, for how many miles, etc). If you want a comparison, then BA is not the best forum to ask either but there are similar threads like yours on the Oneworld forum which is the one where people tend to compare their own programmes. Here, you are essentially on a forum where most people having high level BA EC cards typically do not subscribe to many other OW FFPs (or used to in some cases but rules change) so I would say none of us have a good knowledge of all programmes while either individual stickies will give that to you or the OW forum will give you access to people from the different FFPs (although again, the question is not new and looking there you'll find fora which already give you a lot of answers). Don't mean to sound annoying, just explaining why in practice, this thread in this forum is not the optimal way to get the answers that you want.