QFF Platinum requesting release of extra Classic Reward seats?

[Brettmcg]

Fair enough. I think that only strengthens my argument that the crew won’t be particularly happy. There’s a huge difference between a bunk bed nestled away from passengers versions lying flat on a poor man’s business class seat.

Absolute bunkum. I have a few JetConnect crew friends and they actually lovingly refer to the crew rest as "the pillow fort". I have very rarely come across badly tempered Kiwi crew - generally they are fantastic, and this applies to TT as well as long-haul like QF69/70 and QF15/16.

 

[Daver6]

Absolute bunkum. I have a few JetConnect crew friends and they actually lovingly refer to the crew rest as "the pillow fort". I have very rarely come across badly tempered Kiwi crew - generally they are fantastic, and this applies to TT as well as long-haul like QF69/70 and QF15/16.

100% agree. The JetConnect crew on QF69/70 are downright amazing!

 

[kangarooflyer88]

Absolute bunkum. I have a few JetConnect crew friends and they actually lovingly refer to the crew rest as "the pillow fort". I have very rarely come across badly tempered Kiwi crew - generally they are fantastic, and this applies to TT as well as long-haul like QF69/70 and QF15/16.

Fair enough. The only reason I brought this up was that I recalled news stories back when this change was made in 2022 with reports that crew weren't happy with the situation. Here's one such report from ORAAT:

Oh My: Qantas A330 Crew Rest Controversy

Here's why Qantas flight attendants built a blanket fort in the cabin on a recent 14 hour flight between Brisbane and Los Angeles.

onemileatatime.com

 

[TheDefenestrator]

My first successful request:
QF25 26 Jun SYD-HND I1 -> U1 Declined
QF59 26 Jun SYD-HND I1 -> U1 Approved and booked

Requested Sunday afternoon, ticketed earlier today (points deducted and card charged).

Ended up changing my flight to:
QF59 19 Jun SYD-HND I3 -> U1 Approved

Wanted to keep the existing PNR for the DSCs (I hope) so it was both a date change + release request in the same call. Kudos to the call centre staff member for getting it all done in about 10 minutes.

 

[fletty]

How feasible is it to request an international J release and then get a domestic connection added to it? Would this also add an additional ~25k points pp for the domestic J leg or is it combined under the one booking?

 

[Brettmcg]

How feasible is it to request an international J release and then get a domestic connection added to it? Would this also add an additional ~25k points pp for the domestic J leg or is it combined under the one booking?

That's exactly the way it works. CSA will push the request for the main international segments through the droid, and then if successful, they'll go and grab an available or request a domestic U class connector. Points amount is calculated using the total distance bracket, not the individual amounts for each segment.

 

[elanshin]

Ended up changing my flight to:
QF59 19 Jun SYD-HND I3 -> U1 Approved

Wanted to keep the existing PNR for the DSCs (I hope) so it was both a date change + release request in the same call. Kudos to the call centre staff member for getting it all done in about 10 minutes.

Thanks for beating me to the same dates

 

[kangarooflyer88]

How feasible is it to request an international J release and then get a domestic connection added to it? Would this also add an additional ~25k points pp for the domestic J leg or is it combined under the one booking?

The challenge in my mind is always getting that international seat released. Domestic awards are generally much easier to released for two reasons. First domestic seats can be released from a larger fare bucket (e.g. D discount business or N discount economy versus I super-discount business and Q super discount economy for international). Second, generally speaking no one cares about flying business domestically. I mean if you are flying say Sydney to Los Angeles and have a 1 hour connecting flight up to Brisbane, are you really gonna care being in economy given business class generally consists of a slightly larger seat? I certainly wouldn't!

Generally, how this works is you'll call up Qantas, you'll tell them where you are flying from and flying to (i.e. final destination) and they'll sort out the rest. Going back to my example, last week, I need to book Sydney to Detroit. So called up Qantas to see if a release could be facilitated. I requested Sydney to Detroit, and had the specific flights I wanted (this obviously was researched before I made the call) with me asking the agent if they could release the Qantas flights that aren't available. As it would turn out they couldn't release the preferred flights I wanted (SYD > DFW or MEL > DFW) but they could get BNE > LAX and SYD > BNE released for me. Yes it does mean I'll need to overnight it in LA, but I would've had to overnight it in Detroit had my desired itinerary went through (it's generally not safe to take buses from Detroit airport to Windsor, Ontario at 10 PM). The agents over the phone can stitch in partner flights if needed. So for instance, if you were flying Sydney to Phoenix, Arizona, and managed to get Qantas to release SYD > LAX for you, the agent could add that connecting flight from San Francisco to Phoenix on AA, provided there is classic award availability on American.

Points amount is calculated using the total distance bracket, not the individual amounts for each segment.

You are correct but there is a wrinkle here. There are several different distance based award charts used, which one Qantas applies depends on the itinerary chosen. The cheapest would be the JetStar award chart which would apply if all of your flights were with JetStar, JetStar Asia or JetStar Japan. The next cheapest award chart would be for awards that contain strictly flights from American, Qantas, and Fiji Airways. Lastly, the most expensive would be the partner award chart which would be used if your trip has a flight operated by another partner like LATAM, KLM, FinnAir, British Airways, etc. Importantly, the moment your award ticket has a flight operated by any of these partners, the whole thing is priced out using that table. So for instance, suppose you are flying from Sydney to São Paulo, Brazil. You got a Qantas seat released for QF27 from SYD > SCL, and then connected onto the LATAM flight to GRU. The whole itinerary would price out under the partner award table and not the Qantas table, even though Qantas operated most of the trip.

Then there is the whole matter of OneWorld classic awards that allow you to travel the world business class on OneWorld partners for peanuts. But that's a discussion for an AFF article.

 

[Brettmcg]

The challenge in my mind is always getting that international seat released. Domestic awards are generally much easier to released for two reasons. First domestic seats can be released from a larger fare bucket (e.g. D discount business or N discount economy versus I super-discount business and Q super discount economy for international). Second, generally speaking no one cares about flying business domestically. I mean if you are flying say Sydney to Los Angeles and have a 1 hour connecting flight up to Brisbane, are you really gonna care being in economy given business class generally consists of a slightly larger seat? I certainly wouldn't!

Generally, how this works is you'll call up Qantas, you'll tell them where you are flying from and flying to (i.e. final destination) and they'll sort out the rest. Going back to my example, last week, I need to book Sydney to Detroit. So called up Qantas to see if a release could be facilitated. I requested Sydney to Detroit, and had the specific flights I wanted (this obviously was researched before I made the call) with me asking the agent if they could release the Qantas flights that aren't available. As it would turn out they couldn't release the preferred flights I wanted (SYD > DFW or MEL > DFW) but they could get BNE > LAX and SYD > BNE released for me. Yes it does mean I'll need to overnight it in LA, but I would've had to overnight it in Detroit had my desired itinerary went through (it's generally not safe to take buses from Detroit airport to Windsor, Ontario at 10 PM). The agents over the phone can stitch in partner flights if needed. So for instance, if you were flying Sydney to Phoenix, Arizona, and managed to get Qantas to release SYD > LAX for you, the agent could add that connecting flight from San Francisco to Phoenix on AA, provided there is classic award availability on American.


You are correct but there is a wrinkle here. There are several different distance based award charts used, which one Qantas applies depends on the itinerary chosen. The cheapest would be the JetStar award chart which would apply if all of your flights were with JetStar, JetStar Asia or JetStar Japan. The next cheapest award chart would be for awards that contain strictly flights from American, Qantas, and Fiji Airways. Lastly, the most expensive would be the partner award chart which would be used if your trip has a flight operated by another partner like LATAM, KLM, FinnAir, British Airways, etc. Importantly, the moment your award ticket has a flight operated by any of these partners, the whole thing is priced out using that table. So for instance, suppose you are flying from Sydney to São Paulo, Brazil. You got a Qantas seat released for QF27 from SYD > SCL, and then connected onto the LATAM flight to GRU. The whole itinerary would price out under the partner award table and not the Qantas table, even though Qantas operated most of the trip.

Then there is the whole matter of OneWorld classic awards that allow you to travel the world business class on OneWorld partners for peanuts. But that's a discussion for an AFF article.

The underlying assumption of my post was that Domestic referred to a connection from an Australian port to the next Australian port from where the international flight is departing. Any domestic flight at the other end of the trip (i.e. not operated by QF) is subject to off-the-shelf availability, and is priced as per your post.

 

[Warragul]

How feasible is it to request an international J release and then get a domestic connection added to it? Would this also add an additional ~25k points pp for the domestic J leg or is it combined under the one booking?

FWIW, I recently requested and obtained two First class seats SYD-SIN return for Sept 25, but could not get any Y CR seats for connecting SYD-CBR flights. Plenty showing online. The agents couldn't understand it, ended up going with a separate CR booking and linking them.

 

[Brettmcg]

FWIW, I recently requested and obtained two First class seats SYD-SIN return for Sept 25, but could not get any Y CR seats for connecting SYD-CBR flights. Plenty showing online. The agents couldn't understand it, ended up going with a separate CR booking and linking them.

That sounds like an agent who doesn't know what they're doing. I'd have HUACA'd it...