Questions and Answers

Hello

Last december I was returning from Guangzhou to Doha and i asked qatar to upgrade my business class ticket from business to first class , using the Qmiles.

Seats were never available although all 8 seats of the flight were empty. There was not any problem with my ticket class or the Qmiles needed.

The costant reply from Qatar’s customers service was that there were not seats allocated .
Not a clear answer. They offered me 5,000 qmiles but i never got a straight reply why these seats were not available.

Can somebody explain this ?

Do you remember what fare class you purchased initially?

R class

[QUOTE=”rickyw, post: 62819, member: 1436″]Do you remember what fare class you purchased initially?[/QUOTE]

R class

Looks like the only restrictions for upgrading are you have to have purchased direct from Qatar on a non-code share. Was that the case?

This one has me stumped. I’d probably just take the 5,000 miles as a nice gesture and move on. I’m not sure you’ll get an answer from Qatar on that specific flight

Sometimes revenue management just doesnt want to open seats for awards and upgrades, even if the seats remain empty. Some airlines will open it last minute and you’d have to ask at check in if there are any available.

According their chart an upgrade from business to first on R class is possible[ATTACH=full]622[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]622[/ATTACH]
[QUOTE=”rickyw, post: 62831, member: 1436″]Looks like the only restrictions for upgrading are you have to have purchased direct from Qatar on a non-code share. Was that the case?

This one has me stumped. I’d probably just take the 5,000 miles as a nice gesture and move on. I’m not sure you’ll get an answer from Qatar on that specific flight[/QUOTE]

I bought the tickets directly from their website and it was a normal flight.
They are not going to explain to me, since i asked for explainations many times without any real answer, so the only i can do is to take the 5,000 miles.

As far as i understand they pushed me to ask for an airport upgrade, which i did not.
I think that it is impossible in two hours prior departure, to arrange first class meals and amenities, especially when all the first class is empty. So they could only offer me the hard product and business class soft product. This is my idea and since they do not want to clarify , then it remains my firm thought.

Like I said before, award and upgrade seats are controlled by the airline’s revenue management. Even if you have everything booked to prepare for the upgrade, it’s still up to the airline’s revenue management to decide whether to open up availability or not. In your case it just looks like the airline decided not to make any awards or upgrades available and to leave the seats empty

For the second issue, I’d assume they have some kind of catering plan for last minute occupancy of the premium cabins, in the event of op-ups and things like that. Some airlines advertise at check in paid upgrades, so I’d assume they will be able to accommodate last minute pax.