Over the last year or so, the Qantas web site has slowly been evolving with various pages being replaced. This started out with a new booking engine, which was followed by revamps to the point calculator. More recently, the Frequent Flyer summary pages had a makeover. Last week, it was the turn of the Qantas upgrade calculator to get an upgrade.
it would be fair to say that the calculator is, in fact, a new feature. Previously, it was pretty much a set of tables to work with/ These tables required you to know (or be able to find out), the length, in miles, of the flight that you wished to request an upgrade on.
The new calculator starts out by asking which city your flight is originating from, and then you select your destination city. The way the calculator is designed, you really only get the option to enter routes that Qantas actually fly on.
The following image shows the results of selecting Sydney – Los Angeles as the sector on which you wish to upgrade.
Below the cities selected there are two sections. On the left, you select the Frequent Flyer classification for the ticket you wish to upgrade. On the riight, you select from the available options for the upgrade class. For example, from Flexible Economy, you can choose from Premium Economy or Business as your upgrade class. For some selections, for example business, you will only have one option to upgrade to (in the case of Business, there is only First as an available upgrade option).
Once these are all selected, the page will display the number of points required for the upgrade. There is also an option to view all options displayed in a table. For Sydney – Los Angeles, the table is shown below.
Overall, this is a good improvement, as it allows the points required for an upgrade to be more readily calculated. It removes the need to calculate the distance between two airports that was previously required.
The calculator may be found at this page.
