How do I find out if an A330-200 flight will have Skybeds?

[elusivea]

Hi all,

I need to take the red eye from PER to SYD next month and I'm looking at maybe springing for the extra to fly in Business. I'm only keen to do this if I can give one of the skybeds a whirl, otherwise I'll just suffer through in economy.

Is there any way I can find out if QF 568 on 22nd Aug will have the skybeds? The Qantas site lists the plane as an A330-200 but I believe some of these still have the older style seats.

Thanks for the help!

 

[MelUser]

2 3 2 regular business
2 2 2 skybed

 

[elusivea]

Ok great, thanks.

But is there any way to find out what the seating config is *before* I actually purchase the business class seat?

 

[nlagalle]

2 3 2 regular business
2 2 2 skybed

Only 2 had 2-3-2 seating from memory. Others had 2-2-2.

I'm not sure if you will be able to find out in advance. Anything can change at the last minute.

 

[serfty]

Also, if a 2x2x2 map is showing; it may be a 2x[3-1]x2 (middle seat blocked).

 

[oz_mark]

Also, if a 2x2x2 map is showing; it may be a 2x[3-1]x2 (middle seat blocked).

You can spot those by the middle seats being D and F.

The others have E and F in the middle - but not sure if there is anything to give away whether it is an int or dom.

 

[richie9x]

One thing you can do is go to the Qantas source flight tracker and look at the past history of that flight. Work out if there is any pattern.
QANTAS Flight Tracker.

An easy way to tell the international A330-200s is that they have about 200 Y seats, while the domestic have about 260 Y seats. Just looking at June and July this year, from the looks of it the International config planes only fly that route about once a month.

So looks unlikely. But who knows you could get lucky.

 

[harvyk]

do you need to take the red eye? if not you could always sleep in a comfy bed and fly back on the B747 the next day (I'm assuming it running that day) That way you will get a skybed (minus any last minute change of equipment)

 

[mannej]

There is a way you can check, by checking the seat map on expert flyer. The international Sky Bed A330-200 has two mini sections in the J Cabin of 3 rows each. Looking for 2-2-2 does not differentiate anything as EBM/N have 2-2-2 in Silverwing configuration.

I do believe that you can get expert flyer on a free trial. However the only danger with this approach is if QF decide to change the aircraft they had planned on using.

 

[elusivea]

Thanks for all the help everyone!
I'll check out expertflyer but it sounds like I'll just have to chance it.

Unfortunately I need to be in Perth until 8pm on the 22nd and have an international flight out of SYD at 1310 on the 23rd so red eye is looking to be the only option. There is an early morning flight out of PER on the 23rd which would be fine but it only gives me an hour to connect to the international flight in SYD. I doubt I could actually make that connection.

 

[Moopere]

I'm hitting this problem myself. Happy to buy J seating, but not on a 767 (for instance), yet is just so difficult to tell what you're going to get on the day and, of course, even if you can find out you always run the risk of a last minute change of plane.

I'd be ok with the last minute change of plane if there was better consistency of product. Get the right metal on the day and the J experience will be top notch, get unlucky and its a lesser experience than some of the better Y configs that do PER to the east and back.

Asking punters to stump up for pretty overpriced domestic J simply for the right to play the lottery seems a bit rich.

 

[fiscal]

You can spot those by the middle seats being D and F.

The others have E and F in the middle - but not sure if there is anything to give away whether it is an int or dom.

Expert Flyer shows DF as the middle two seats