I just find it strange that this has filtered down to the agents in the Melbourne office. Thai can always restrict their inventory but they don't. I think this idea that certain airlines are 'lessening' the brand buy having cheap rewards is rubbish. Either you are part of the alliance or you or not.
That argument is sort of circular. You are part of an alliance in that you provide the ability to redeem awards to other members in the alliance. It doesn't actually stipulate to what degree this can happen. In the moderate case, restricting the redemption of premium awards is one way, and you get enough people complaining that "I can see a seat, so why can't I have it" (a common USA-FFP-ism). In a more extreme case, the redemption may be unilaterally blocked for all but their own members, a la the case of SQ. In saying that, SQ probably "fulfill" their part of the alliance in that respect by providing redemption ability on
some seats (namely cheaper J, old F and all Y).
I don't know whether it filters down to any particular degree or not. One could argue that perhaps there are TG FFP members who are not able to find or book awards that vehemently are complaining and the fact that they are being snapped up quicker by, say, US awards is the reason. That is a failure of the TG system for sure, but no less the reason why they
could be annoyed (and the frontline staff are taking a beating from both sides; (a) from upper management and (b) from disgruntled customers). You can probably bet that if TG start taking a more serious stance on cross-FFP redemption, especially premium awards, many people will not be very happy at all about it (and when I say "not very happy", I don't mean from a point-of-view of "oh well, it was good whilst it lasted", but rather the point-of-view saying "this is injustice and anti-alliance behaviour"). And the practice is not about to disappear - for example, LH now restrict A380 J and F awards to LH SEN and HON members only. Whether these are "temporary" measures before they get more A380s (a la some of us are hopeful SQ will evolve KF redemptions in a similar fashion) or whether this is intended to combat against awards going too "cheaply" is very debatable.
Certainly there were cases of US members on US awards getting a bit of cold shoulder treatment by Lufthansa Group staff whilst overseas. It's not common, but there are reports out there.
Of course, it could just be a case of the agent thinking (in typical Aussie fashion), "Bl**dy hell, another one of these bl**dy US awards in TG F.... where the hell are they all coming from...."
