Qantas Frequent Flyer Points to Upgrade

zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 13:35
Last edited 25/03/2022 - 13:47 by 1 other user

Looking to fly from Melbourne to London in July for a family celebration. I have almost 600,000 QFF points which is enough for a return economy flight. Was thinking of booking and paying for an economy ticket (at a minimum S class) and then trying the business class upgrade 24 hours prior to departure.

Wondered if anyone has any experience (and had success) doing this and also if my chances would be better on a flight via Singapore as opposed to the more direct option via Perth which I'm sure is very popular? Or any other suggestions that experienced travellers may have?

Travel Frequent Flyer Qantas Frequent Flyer Reward Points

Comments

  • Stewardo on 25/03/2022 - 13:40

    I don’t think you can upgrade the cheapest fare bucket in international economy
    https://www.pointhacks.com.au/how-do-qantas-upgrades-using-p…

    • zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 13:43

      I looked into that…if I go for a saver fare (rather than the cheapest sale fare) it does appear to be upgradeable with points from what I can see

  • Stewardo on 25/03/2022 - 13:44

    Isn’t it B,H or Y for International

    • zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 13:50

      I went through the booking process and selected a saver fare and clicked on fare rules and it appeared to be upgradeable

      • Stewardo on 25/03/2022 - 13:52

        Upgradable to premium and business?

  • Drakesy on 25/03/2022 - 13:45
    +2

    A return flight to London should be roughly 120-140k points with business about double that.

    Buying economy then upgrading later would be a waste of points and work out more expensive.

    • zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 13:50

      Thanks for this info! I'll look into it

    • zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 13:54

      Just tried a points only booking and there's nothing under 600,000 points each way for July as there don't appear to be any classic reward seats left

      • Drakesy on 25/03/2022 - 13:56
        +4

        Yeah, fair enough, with the London/Aus route it's in high demand and from memory it's about a 12 month lead time on booking to get the saver rate.

        Also FWIW the probability of getting an upgrade on that flight is close to zero, the business class seats are where Qantas makes the money on these flights and generally they'd rather provide a discounted business seat to a fair paying customer than a frequent flyer, even then platinum and gold members get first dibs and most likely will take the few seats on offer.

  • josh909 on 25/03/2022 - 13:53
    +2

    You're searching under 'Points plus pay' - not the best use of points.

    Search under Classic Rewards and you should find fares for ~110K points. I searched for Sydney to London (in July) this morning and found quite a few reward economy seats available.

    This would leave you 400K+ points which you could then use to bid for an upgrade.

    • zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 13:55

      Thanks for this…I'll look into it. Could always go via Sydney too to give better options

  • MrHyde on 25/03/2022 - 13:56
    +1

    Also, what is your Qantas FF membership level.

    For upgrades, you pretty much need to be Platinum to have any chance of grabbing them. They get first dibs, then Gold and then the others.

    • zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 14:04

      I'm down the bottom with Bronze! I think the option to buy a classic rewards economy looks good and then I can maybe just take my chances the day before. I'm not fussed really, just never flown business class and would like to to it once in my lifetime!

  • stirlo on 25/03/2022 - 14:03
    +2

    If you only have bronze status be aware that it's quite unlikely you'll get an upgrade. Flights to London and LA are the most in demand routes on the Qantas network and there plenty of people requesting upgrades as they're relatively cheap (plus for people with points there's no other option if classic reward seats are sold out).

    Coming back from the LA in January I intentionally moved my flight to a day when the A380 was flying to have a better chance at an upgrade. Even though they'd only upgraded it to an A380 (which added dozens of premium seats) and I had close enough to 1 million points my upgrade bid was unsuccessful. The plane wasn't even that full in economy either.

    There's also only 1 fixed points upgrade price (from economy classic reward) so you can't even decide to bid a stupidly high number of points to try and get you to the top of the upgrade queue.

  • djkelly69 on 25/03/2022 - 14:15
    +2

    Is this just for one person? 600k points is almost enough to get there and back twice in Business.

    318k is the cost for a OneWorld Award (essentially a RTW) ticket in Business, which will probably be about the same amount of points as straight return flight in Business (if you can find one). That way you can make more of a holiday out of it and stop other places as well (although it is a lot of work to book it all).

    Anything direct to London is one of QF's busiest routes, so award seats at this late stage are going to be near impossible. I would look at a routing through Asia or the Middle East. Also if you can avoid LHR it will likely save you a fair bit on taxes.

    Edit: I have had a bit of look at random dates in July, and if you can be a bit flexible on the days you leave/come back, there should definitely be options through SIN, DXB or DOH for business class flights.

  • porterble on 25/03/2022 - 15:27

    S-bucket and then upgrade will work. Currently 108k points for the leg from memory.

  • theoracle30 on 25/03/2022 - 16:28

    Indeed, you can't pay more than 159,000 Qantas Points + tax for a single-airline Business Class redemption between Australia and Europe. Qatar Airways came out with more seats two days ago, though lots of people have booked them since.

  • zazutata on 25/03/2022 - 20:07

    Thanks so much for all the comments and advice. Will be getting stuck into this at the weekend and will try and book early next week.

  • Ciderfizz44 on 30/05/2022 - 00:37

    How'd you go ?

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