Any tips on securing 3xQF Award J seats to LON in Sep-17

Any tips on securing 3xQF Award J seats to LON in Sep-17

I am trying to secure 3 x QF Award Business Class tickets London (return) on set dates (3 - 26 Sep 2017) and was wondering if anyone has any tips for me please. I am a Plat FF with Qantas.

Thanks 

Even as a WP reckon you have no chance. everything is working against you....only a few months out, needing three seats and set dates. That is a perfect storm of misery.

2017?

Thanks Russell but its Sep-17. Still no chance?

Had look on Expertflyer.

For both ex SYD and MEL nothing at all on QF metal for 17 Sep. Not even X inventory (Economy redemption) is available.

Oh did you mean September 2017?

Hi Tim,

"you can book a Classic seat up to 353 days in advance for a one-way, return or multi-destination Classic Award in Economy, Premium Economy, Business or First."

Work out that date, lock it into your calendar and have a look online or give Qantas a call the day inventory opens up

You might have trouble getting award seats on a Qantas aircraft (even within the correct booking window) being what is typically a school holiday period, but don't forget that you can also use your Qantas Points to book flights on Emirates, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, China Eastern, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Jet Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Qatar Airways and many others, which might have better award availability.

(Some of these options will be available via the Qantas website, others can only be booked by calling Qantas directly.)

You might also consider flying into or out of other cities in Europe, such as Paris, Rome, Frankfurt etc where more award options may be available (and you'd also avoid the UK's hefty APD charges too), and also flying into or out of another Australian city (as some airlines may have award seats available, say, to Melbourne, but not to Brisbane).

Might not be perfect but it's one solution. :)

Appologies up front for the essay...

I did something similar earlier in the year for J seats to LAX. There's a certain number of days in advance that Qantas release seats, I'm not exactly sure but someone on here will be able to tell exactly... It's something like 350 days in advance.

If you start checking now and for the next few days you should be able to figure this out by looking for the furthest days out that you can book award tickets... and if you're a little OCD like myself:) I was able to figure out exactly what time of day they become available. Ie back in Feb each day at 11am they would release award seats to LA for @350 days later.

Then I simply figured out the day and time that the flights I wanted should be released and created a calendar alert.

Few otther points:

1. Book each direction seperatly. If you wait for the return flights to become available you'll likely miss out on the outbound flights. This shouldn't make any difference to the points or fees.

2. Do some checks in advance to see if they are actually releasing the number of seats in advnace that you need. I worked out for me (Bronze FF at the time of booking) that only 2 were released each day/flight to LAX. But this may be different for you as a Platinum or even more seats generally available to LHR. This will at least let you come up with a backup plan - (ie split up an go on seperate flights or event a day apart etc).

3. Obviously you can also book fligths on EK for the same number of points so this may give you some more options/flexibility.

4. Haven't checked your dates but I found Mon - Wed particularly were much easier to get availability. Later in the week and weekends much more difficult.

5. you can always call the call centre and have them check after they're released. They seem to be able to check many more options than are available on the website. But I believe there is an additional booking fee for this and for flights other that QF & EK they'll likely cost you more points.

Finally - when I was looking for my booking they were literally releasing seats every day at the same time like clock work. However a few weeks later this changed and I could no longer see any J class seats being released. So take nothing for granted here as its completly at the discretion of Qantas. At this point it'd setup an alert on Expertflyer to check each day in case they get released later.

I'm sure others may have a more simple approach, but this certainly worked for me and I was able to get J class for 2 in both directions on the exact days I wanted to fly which I'm pretty happy about!

Best of Luck

Even look for J from Asia 

Bangkok, Hong Kong etc

or book PE and upgrade......

Like Damien00 I approached this by checking out the availability daily and knew what to expect when "booking day" came around.  While QF release their seats some 353 days in advance, CX is about a week earlier, so if you look now, there are QF seats for 14/7/17 and CX seats for 21/7/17.  You will find that CX will cost more points, but much less $.  As a QF gold I can only recall seeing a maximum of 2 seats in J, so spliting up either by flight or cabin may be necessary.  Maybe you will do better as a P.

Look at booking no more than 2 at any one time with the 3rd travelling day before/after.  Seems to be two award seats was what I could see as a (then) OWE seeking J.  Also search as far out as possible.

Agree with all the above but note that anecdotally some Plats have called up Qantas and had an extra seat released for them, though it'd need to be on an unpopular day

The most common advice when looking for premium award seats is to be flexible with your dates.  I'm looking for some F seats from LHR in July next year, and from my obsessively frequent searches without success I'm now convinced that QF simply don't release any premium seats for certain days or weeks, even 350 days in advance.

Yet, I booked 2 award seats in F to LHR in June 2017, and at least one award seat in F is still available on that same date.