Does Qantas actively discourage flight redemptions?

[serfty]

Nope, specifically looking outside school holidays...

And even if I was, it doesn't explain the bizareness of having to route through another city, despite there clearly being FF seats available...

Two things, Qantas can vary availability by route, or they may make available a certain number of award seats for direct flights and a certain number for indirect or even via specific cities. All the common GDS's allow this. So you'll see different availability for a flgith segment as part of an indirect route than the same segment if take direct.

Having posted that, I believe it is more likely the issue is as post by oz_mark.

To the OP, what specific date(s) are you looking at (if you would prefer this to be more discrete, please PM this)?

If you can do that, I'll check it out.

 

[drron]

Be VERY VERY careful with this. If this is happening, then there is almost certainly no trans pac business class award seats. The business class you are getting is the domestic flight from one east coast Australian city to another. It will likely be an economy seat across the Pacific either way.

I am sure this is the answer.Did you go to select flights?There you would have seen that transpac is likely to be in Y-a J award is shown as available as 1 leg is in J.
Maybe this is a thing that could be taken to the QFF Rockpool lunch as it really is annoying.
On the other hand i dont find the VA J transpac classic awards that much more available than QF-and likely to be less so with the status matching.The QFF JASA seems mostly but not always, to be better than the VA any seat award.I do prefer the VA page where both the classic and any seat awards are both shown.
So I checked in April and when routed via BNE the BNE-LAX sector is PE.Better than going via MEL when transpac is in Y on most of the days.Interestingly there were several days with F awards.Although if a MEL-LAX F award was available if you searched from SYD they would offer SYD-BNE the day before then BNE-MEL-LAX.Obviously a mileage runner in QFF.

Now the bug in the VA system.If you were searching from SYD it does not offer routing via BNE if that was available and SYD wasn't for their classic awards-and Markis I did it on several days in april searching from both SYD and BNE.There was availability though on 40% of days in April for 1 award.