Qantas Tips

There is no way to ever bend the rules. Qantas staff stick to their manual, and won't go the extra mile. For example if you are on a cheap ticket and you want to change your flight times - tough. You can't.

Qantas have a nasty habit of resheduling some of their flights without warning. If you book a domestic flight

Qantas Link Dash-8 at Canberra, ACT

At some of the smaller more rural airports, Qantas staff get very fussy if you take photos of the planes. Just do it anyway; its not illegal.

Booking Seats

The system gives prefernce to Qantas Frequent Flyers who can book ticket a few days before and still have a good chance of getting their seat preference. This is different to many other airlines which gives preferance to the once a year traveller who books months before. They also stop seat bookings when the cabin is full to a certain level. However if you are not a frequent flyer, and have not travelled on Qantas before, this does engender a certain frisson as you travel to the airport with no idea which seat you'll be in, and with a random chance of sitting with your travelling companions.

Booking Seats the choice for a Gold, before T-80

Once about 70% of the cabin is booked, all further seat allocation is put on hold. They retain this flexibility so that groups - families, and so on - can be seated together during a flight, but it sometimes doesn't work that way.

People without status on Qantas/OneWorld don't get to pick their seats until 7 days before the flight, however you can ring up Qantas and they can allocate a seat for you.

The seat booking systems for domestic have now been aligned in a similar way to international, although there are still a few quirks.

Qantas have never publicised the system, however a few experiments seems to show how it works.

For a domestic booking, Chairman's Lounge (CL) can book any seat. For example, in business, they can book row 1. Platinums can only book row 2 back, and "lowly" Golds and Silvers, row 3. It's the same in economy, where Platinum members (WP) can pretty much book any seat, except the exceptionally desireable exit rows (Chairmans Lounge only). Gold (SG) and Silver (PS) get a smaller portion of the cabin that they can book.

A crucial time, which you should mark in your diary, is 80 hours ahead of the scheduled take off time (That's 3 days and 8 hours), when much more of the cabin is opened up. They often open up row 1 (or 2 for Golds) at T-80 if there are no CL booked. Finally, at 24 hours before takeoff, online checkin opens, and it's pretty much open season for seats (either by Select Seats or OLCI; it doesn't seem to matter either way).

All sectors have individual times for opening up of seats, however the Qantas online systems likes you to book all seats in one go. Therefore, you can do the first leg, accept whatever the second leg is offering, then change the second leg at T-80.

On domestic flights, planes change - a lot! - and your nicely booked seat plans can be scuppered. On a 737-800 the danger in row 7 is that a 738 might turn into a 734 and you'll suddenly end up without a window. And on a Qantas 763 avoid preselecting row 25, because substitutions occur and the ubiquitous 763-336 doesn't have a row 25, and you'll end up in the back of the bus.

And don't think you can cheat the system by either making a direct amadeus seat booking through CheckMyTrip or even using Expedia's dodgy seatguru system: these seat bookings generally fail to get transfered to Qantas.

Buying Qantas exit row seats

On the ultra-long-haul kangaroo routes, the extra legroom is tempting, and it also saves you the hassle of having to move other passengers when you want to get up. However, Qantas will make you pay, and pay a lot, for the privalidge. Short haul or Trans-Tasman flights are $40. Between Australia and Asia, it costs AU$80 (or 10,000 Frequent Flyer points) and Long Haul to the UK or US it's a whopping $160 (20,000 points). At that sort of cash, it might be better to look at premium economy, which may only be a few hundred dollars more.

These seats are non-refundable, so if you change your flight you'll loose the lot. You can book online, but this system is very flakey: you may need to telephone Qantas to guarantee them. Domestic and 737 flights are totally excluded from the system.

Platinum, Gold and Silver Qantas Frequent Flyers (and equivalent oneworld members) can book them as soon as the booking is made. Bronze and everyone else can only book them 7 days in advance.

However, if you want to take a chance, you may be able to get exit row seats, or something similar, for free. If you are a Silver or Gold frequent flyer, you'll also get first dibs on exit row seats if any are left at checkin (which is unlikely).

Qantas tickets

QantasLink 717 at Mackay

Qantas 737 at Canberra, ACT

The two full economy rates (earning 20 status credits - or 40 on long flights over 1000 miles) are:
Flexi-savers (K) are the same as super savers, but offer free changes, but you can't cancel on the day of departure.
Fully Flexible (Y, B, H) is where you can cancel even just before the flight and get a full refund. These are the same conditions for business class.
Business does what it says on the tin. You also get access to the new Business Class lounges when flying on a purely domestic itinery - a new and radical step for Qantas. Occasionally when there is a promotion on, business class fares at a weekend are half the price of business class in the week - for example Sydney to Melbourne business comes in at A$295 when there is little traffic, but these fares are very hard to obtain.

Qantas "Mumbo-Jumbo" 737 at Cairns, Queensland

There are additional ticket classes. In First Z is a First Award, F is full fare. In Business A is discount Business, and U is an Award while J is Full fare. In Economy D is discount Economy, X is an Award, Y is Full fare (B & H are discount Y, but with very few conditions). K is more discounted with some conditions, while M, L, S, V & O are usually heavily discounted. Q is an earlybird and discounted airfare.

Booking domestic flights from abroad

Qantas A330 at Perth, WA

Spelling Qantas

Special Fares

There is another promo in London, with Australia return for £699, plus 3 internal flights. This can also work out better than booking flights yourself, but there are a lot of restrictions. It often appears in May each year, however it was missing in this years list of promos.

Free A$20 per domestic flight

You will first be offered a free drink. Then you will be offered free cheese and biscuit. Finally, if you keep on refusing, you will be offered an A$20 voucher.

Bargain fares at short notice

If it looks as if a flight will still be very empty, Qantas will reduce the cost of Red E-deal tickets one week before the day of the flight. If you book an E-ticket over the internet the fares can be incredibly low, such as Sydney to Perth for A$150, although this is rare.

Business class for an economy fare

Another rare upgrade is to get a four class 747 on a three class route, in which case Business sits in First, Premium Economy taking downstairs business, and Premium Economy in rows 34-37 is open for those with cheap tickets. An even rarer version is a four class on a two class route, in which case there may be a chance of a double upgrade, although in all cases cabin service is exactly what youv'e paid for. You only get a chance to sit in a better seat.

Operational Upgrades

Qantas First Class IFE on the Airbus A380

To start with, make sure you are a frequent flyer, and you do fly frequently: after all, if Qantas are going to upgrade anyone, they will upgrade those passengers who fly with them pretty regularly, and hence will enjoy the upgrade enough to put more business Qantas's way. Then if the flight is full in economy, and someone needs to be moved up, the check in staff will first look at Platinum Qantas Frequent Flyer members, and then Gold level, and then at other Oneworld members at the equivalent levels (Emerald, and then Saphire, but rarely if ever Ruby). Another thing that Qantas look at is how much you paid for your ticket: it's much more likely to happen with a full fare ticket (although occasionally you can get lucky with a discounted economy ticket). On Qantas the airline has heard - probably hundreds of times a day - requests for an upgrade: the general consensus seems to be that if you ask for an upgrade, you're less likely to get it, although opinions differ on an upgrade strategy for Qantas.

As always, my advice on dressing properly in the pages on how to get an upgrade applies.

Qantas website

Qantas BAE146 at Melbourne

There are two serious bugs in the website. If you select a domestic journey that involves a change of plane, and then click on one of the sectors to see the aircraft type, the website will always shows the duration of that sector as the total journey time between your beginning and end point.

The second bug is apparent if you go back to "seach again" when making a booking. The out and return dates reset to todays date each time you do so. This is very annoying, although you can get around it by using your browsers "back" button.

There is also a much more minor bug - when making an award booking, if you click on "next day" to see if there are any flights the next day, you are taken back to the beginning of the search, and all the information you entered is lost.