Qantas First Class "Nothing more than a premium business class"

[cove]

Wouldn’t you prefer a sale price, double status credits and a special hotel deal Quickstatus. If you got that you would be living the dream.

 

[Quickstatus]

(Yes but current DSC is only for Saver fares and above)

@cove you missed tax deductibility after “special hotel deal...” which prices the DSC offer at $4.5 per SC into JFK

 

[amaroo]

I'm about to become ambidextrous - when I fly East it's QF F.... when I fly West it's SQ suites

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I wish there was a way of easily getting an F/J combo via QF online for the QF11 to JFK.


With the refurb of the A380 , some say the new J cabin will be a better product while the F product will get a slight touchup. With the difference narrowed, maybe QF F really is as @lacuska1 suggests Premium J.

Even MH is canned the word First from the 4 seat mini F cabin in their A350. preferring to call it BusinessSuite. Their reasoning is that it is easier to sell it as a J product for a slightly lower price than a F labelled product.

QF F is in reality a J+ product. The ‘plus’ being the seat. Everything else is shared with J except for the champagne (although EVA Air matches that in their J).

I’d forgotten about MH. But then their base was just a couple of flights to begin with (just the a380s before they got their a350s)

 

[boomy]

Most pax who tried other F products will agree QF is mediocre. Lately I’m using points for QF F as plan B in case can’t get availability on better airlines. It’s sad because I love QF and being very loyal most of the time but when it comes to first class they just don’t do it as well as others. Adding the high taxes makes it even harder to justify booking QF F.

 

[Quickstatus]

Why is it impossible to get via online a QF ticket that books F in the SYD-LAX segment and J in the LAX-JFK segment of QF11

 

[kermatu]

I’ll take EK bling anyday.

Agree. Have to admit I didn't even notice the 'bling' first time, let alone since. So irrelevant compared to comfort, service and quality of product. Good news for us I guess (not that I'm likely to frequent the F cabins that often).

 

[kermatu]

With the refurb of the A380 , some say the new J cabin will be a better product while the F product will get a slight touchup. With the difference narrowed, maybe QF F really is as @lacuska1 suggests Premium J.

Unless QF significantly improves its F food, drink and service then I agree, there will be very little reason to purchase F over J. That said, I find little reason to fly QF long haul at all anymore.

 

[cove]

I do quite a lot of business in Los Angeles region but none in New York City. I would have to go to Florida or another spot to be into a tax deductible region.
Lots of professionals can go to LHR or JFK for conferences. This year I have Las Vegas and I may drive there from Los Angeles.
Getting a tax deduction to make a trip work could be a significant saving with the top personal tax rate running at 47%.
If Qantas race to fix the A380 business class seat I would consider 13 odd hours to LAX to be ok. At that point you could book that online thru to New York I believe for a QF11 run.

 

[Anna]

Last Boxing Day I flew F on QF35 because the F fare was cheaper than the J fare. I felt I got exactly what I paid for.

The only time any of the FAs did anything beyond the minimum was during the compulsory 'lights out' after lunch, when one of them proactively came to my seat to open my window shade again for me because she had read on my profile that I dislike having to sit in the dark on a daytime flight. Most of the rest of the time after lunch the FAs weren't even to be seen, to the point that I had to press the call bell even to get water.

The First host was pretty good - she rang on Xmas Eve, I missed the call and had to ring back at 2.55pm on Xmas Eve and she was still there even though her voicemail said she would be finishing at 3pm, and she managed to fit both me and my travel companion in for massage slots (although she made it sound like the transit time with a journey originating in ADL made it difficult to get a slot in the spa). My massage was ok but not fabulous and I have had much better massages elsewhere.

Boarding was a zoo with the F pax lining up with everyone else to get space on the escalator that takes you down to the MEL boarding area. Absolutely nothing was premium about that part of the QF F experience.

All in all I felt like I'm not missing out if I'm in J and not in F on QF. I feel like there is not that much different between the two except the swivel on the F seat.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The boarding process could be improved. When i flew they herded F pax behind the podium and closed the barrier strap. We waited there for about 10 mins while the crew did their final checks.

The gate staff were harried, full flight and hundreds crowding around the boarding pass readers with no where to go.

 

[Forg]

Disembarking on my single F experience was premium ... over everyone else.
But not compared to a Y SYD-BNE flight.

It was a massively discounted QF F ticket on an EK A388 SYD-AKL, and all A380-capable gates were busy. So we parked somewhere-or-other, and they opened the front door. F just walked down the front stairs from the upper deck, off the ‘plane, and down about a billionty stairs to the ground. Thing is ... they only opened that front door, the entire A380 went out the front door via a single set of stairs! I reckon we were probably in our hotel room before the last Y pax got to the terminal.

 

[serfty]

Boarding was a zoo with the F pax lining up with everyone else to get space on the escalator that takes you down to the MEL boarding area. Absolutely nothing was premium about that part of the QF F experience.

If you are departing gate 9 or 11 at MEL, the Lift will take you from outside the First Lounge right down to the boarding level, bypassing the escalators. Note that this may not be available for USA flights.

 

[ajca]

With fully-flat 1-2-1 seating in business becoming (blessedly) more or less a standard globally, the marginal benefit to the previous generation of F products has decreased such that the carriers have to either: 1) give up on F and phase it out with the next wave of cabin refits or 2 ) do increasingly extravagant things to differentiate to make F work.

Those extravagant products are really expensive to build and operate and so they need to be accompanied with really high prices (not FF redemptions!). If you're looking for the kind of customers that will actually pay $20k-$30k hard cash per person, you're not going to find a lot of them in Australia to fill up the cabins. Let's face it - what percentage of us here on AFF or even Australians we know have ever paid for a single full-fare long-haul F ticket with cash? You will find a fair few of such people in Asia and the Middle East which is why we see that Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, SQ are still going hard at it.

If you think about the routes we are talking about, Australia to US is the only one where F is even possibly viable because there's no competition from the Middle Eastern or Asian airlines. But does it make sense for Qantas to keep an F product just for one set of trans-Pacific routes in the long term?

As soon as you look at other key routes (ie to Asia and to Europe via Middle East) and introduce competition from the Middle Eastern or Asian airlines, F makes no sense for Qantas. Qantas is not going to make the investment needed for a competitive product (and I don't think it would make sense for them to try). What kind of rich person in Singapore is going to fly anything other than Singapore Airlines Suites on their trips to Australia? What kind of rich person in the Middle East is going to fly anything other than the Etihad Residence given a choice? Also some of these high end guys/gals customers are deciding whether to take a Netjets G550 or a commercial flight, so their expectations are going to be very high.

So - the kind of people with the kind of money to drop (actual cash money, not FF redemptions!) on F tickets are going to choose the very best product available and Qantas's heart is clearly not at all in it, the product is not competitive, which is why we see Qantas going down option 1) and phasing out F and (I think?) when the 380s retire it will be gone for good.

Going back to the OPs post - sorry that your Qantas F experience sucked. But the reality is that you were able to get that seat for $1000 and a bunch of FF points because Qantas wasn't able to sell it. And there's a reason they weren't able to sell it. If it makes you feel better, those flights would have sucked way more for all the people back in economy. Always healthy to keep some perspective

 

[cove]

We pay once a year when double status credits are available purely to stay Platinum. Pretty much the rest we go on points and miles because we live in the land of plenty.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Agree. The only thing to consider is that while fares from Australia (and some places like Hong Kong can be prohibitively expensive (20-30k is what CX charges ex HKG to the USA)), those are fares with a hefty ‘Australia tax’ built in.

Buy those same fares from other places, or have a connection, and they become more reasonable. SQ’s $11k F fares to europe are not excessive if you’re already paying 8-9k for QF business class. And that 11k is also matched by Lufthansa, allowing SQ F in sectors to and from Sin-AU.

Ex Asia where there’s competition you can take advantage of much cheaper fares, like LH’s advance purchase F. Air France has a similar deal... around $6k for F ex Asia if you buy it at the right time (for their new 777 product).

 

[amaroo]

We paid for 2 x F SYD-LHR-SYD December last year. Two reasons - it was a decent price, and the DSC got me over the line for P1. In the couple months I've been P1 I've requested, been approved and booked for multiply F and J (LH) awards.... the strategy has worked well for us. Have plenty more points to burn over the next 10.5 months of my P1 membership.

Once they're all gone we will start on our KF miles and Amex points.... it's all suites from there.

 

[MathNerd]

I've read every single post in this thread extensively, and with interest. It's amazing seeing all the perspectives from both F regulars and F newbies/"never-flown-F" folks alike. I must admit I did get drawn to the title (being a criticism/"bashing" of QF, especially QF F), so my input here may slightly be biased.

FWIW, I've only flown First Class once. It was a SQ Suites redemption on SQ218 MEL-SIN, which was the flight that kicked off my wife's and my honeymoon (we were headed to the Maldives and the second leg SIN-MLE was in MI Y, so a massive "downgrade" from SQ Suites and TPR at SIN). This entire itinerary was a surprise, as we had just finished going through 2 weddings, on two different continents, a week apart from each other. A break was needed and my wife was feeling the tiredness really badly. What better way than to treat her (and myself!) to an experience that I've had my eye on ever since I saw what points/miles/awards are capable of!

Being a "relatively" new entrant to the points/miles/awards game, I'm very surprised I was able to snag 2 x Suites awards on that flight, given I was making the booking only ~3 months before the flight. There were a few hiccups along the way (only 1 seat available for immediate Saver confirmation, the second available for immediate Advantage confirmation and Saver waitlist; learning the mistake of transferring points from my AmEx MR account to my wife's KF account, the "stern" letter from SQ regarding this, the eventual "refund" of points back to my MR account; the waitlist clearing the day before the flight so multiple calls to SQ later; and finally paying exorbitant rates for the SIN-MLE flight in full-flex Economy even though we didn't need the benefits of that fare class).

When it came time for the flight though, SQ Suites was all I expected, and then some. The crew brought out a honeymoon cake for us, with 2 teddy bears and a card signed by the captain as well as all the crew assigned to Suites. They took care of every need my wife and I had. We both BTC'd, but as it was meant to be a surprise, I BTC'd the famed Boston Lobster Thermidor for my wife. She is a massive seafood fan, but has never had the pleasure of Lobster, so this was the *perfect* opportunity to deliver on that. I've posted previously about my SQ Suites experience so I won't go any further, this post is already becoming too long (sorry!).

What I was getting at, is that I can't see another airline's F product achieving what my wife and I experienced on this flight. Especially not QF! Maybe EK/LH could do it, but I haven't seen any reports of this.

As a reference, I'm just a lowly maths teacher so of course my ability to rack up points faster than the spool-up of an A380 engine is nil/nada/zilch. So every flight that I get to take in J/F/Suites is cherished very much. As a further reference, we've only flown J once, and that was via an MHUpgrade system heading back to MEL from BLR after our first wedding ceremony. Even though it was MH J, it was a *massive* step-up from the purely Y flying that we had been accustomed to on every single flight prior to that one. It is during this journey that we learnt the difference between 'regional' J (it's just Y+, if that) and 'actual'/long-haul J (where you get a bed to sleep on, basically).

We're heading to Europe in December this year, having booked MEL-LHR and ZRH-MEL on SQ J. By the looks of it, we'll get to experience the "new" J seat double-bed on the ZRH-SIN leg so looking forward to that.
Planning on redeeming SQ Suites on the MEL-SIN-FRA-JFK journey for travel in July 2020. Though with the dummy bookings I've been doing it looks like the Northern Summer schedule has a 777-300ER plying the MEL-SIN leg which means that snagging 2 Saver F awards will be impossible, unless they bring the A380 back to this route.

TL;DR: SQ Suites is miles (pardon the pun) ahead of anything I've ever experienced and I doubt QF F will ever get there.

 

[Cossie]

You agreed with the post Cossie. On the dress standards? Are you intending to wear your dinner suit next flight?
I thought only Y got the Bickfords.
I don’t mind casseroles per se but they do need to be well made and not just a pile of gristle in gravy.

Actually the worst F I had was BA where for breakfast I asked for a croissant and that’s all I got on the plate. No butter, jam etc and not even asked if I wanted them. Hardly an exquisite dining experience.

Not sure why I agreed? The only suit I possess is the one I wore to my leaving formal, that's only 46 years ago. Believe it or not, I doubt it would fit me now!

 

[DC3]

Agree. Have to admit I didn't even notice the 'bling' first time, let alone since ...

I find the EK gaudiest hard to miss. Then again, I have been to Specsavers.