Discount Economy Travel Agent Booking on Qantas - Pay to Rebook in Business

[joelby]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread. Has anyone managed pay to upgrade a sale fare by calling Qantas, when the flight was booked through a travel agent? I suspect it's not possible to do this without involving the travel agent.. I'll give Qantas a call when I've got some free time, but was interested in hearing if there's no hope first.

The flight was booked by my employer through the a corporate travel agent, and it would be difficult to explain why I should have a more expensive flight - and it is not obvious how I could pay the difference to them - so I was hoping to bypass everyone.

I guess the solution next time is to get them to book flights after verifying that no sale fares are available!

 

[MELso]

As a general rule, airlines don’t want to touch tickets issued by agents until 24 hours or so before departure. You may be lucky though.

 

[joelby]

Thanks MELso. In that case I think I'll just forget it, try to enjoy Y, and hope for a whole row!

 

[Ade]

Depending on your FF situation, you could potentially use any points that you might have and request a points upgrade?

 

[joelby]

Normally yes, but because the international segment (LAX-MEL) is a sale fare (Q), I don’t have the option to request an upgrade. The outgoing leg is V, which I have requested an upgrade on.

Hence, wondering if I could pay cash to upgrade Q to V, so that I have a chance of upgrading. If the only chance of doing this is within 24 hours of departure, then I would end up further down the upgrade queue anyway.

 

[elanshin]

Normally yes, but because the international segment (LAX-MEL) is a sale fare (Q), I don’t have the option to request an upgrade. The outgoing leg is V, which I have requested an upgrade on.

Hence, wondering if I could pay cash to upgrade Q to V, so that I have a chance of upgrading. If the only chance of doing this is within 24 hours of departure, then I would end up further down the upgrade queue anyway.

I think for general reference, you can have a chat with your employer about it not just for this flight but in general if the booking can be in "saver" class.

Also the other thing of course is your own personal FF status. Whilst it's not 0, the odds of upgrades is significantly lower if you yourself aren't gold+, it may not actually be worthwhile to constantly buy Saver over Sale fares hoping for upgrades.

 

[justinbrett]

I think you have no chance of QF touching it (anything that involves a fare change) when booked through a TA. Also your employer may have got a discount from the public fare which further complicates things.

Only way to do it would be an airport upgrade with cash and I've never heard of QF offering these. I think also the bid now upgrades aren't available from Sale fares.

Just go for a neighbour free seat, much cheaper and makes Y much more tolerable.