My husband and I are hoping to fly to Europe in August from Perth, WA. We are planning to book an economy seat with cash on the direct QA flight London-Perth, and request a points upgrade. We have approx. 260k points between the two of us and wondering if offering this many points would be enough? Is there a sweet spot or a minimum number of points required to get upgraded? I’m also part of Qantas’s new “Points Club” so wondering if this could help! Thanks in advance 
Hi Helena,
Unfortunately, there is no amount of Qantas points you can pay to guarantee an upgrade. The only way is to redeem a business reward seat directly.
The article below will likely explain this better than I ever will.
Hi helena,
Didn’t see any replies so I thought I’d reply, but the news to my knowledge is not positive. Not sure if you know but there are two ways Qantas can upgrade. One is bidding which becomes available right near the flight which allows you to bid a certain amount of points and a cash component. I think that’s what you’re referring to. I am an avid point collector, but have never even attempted to bother to bid for one of these as just the examples they provide to bid are simply ridiculous amounts of points compared to if you were to have originally booked the flight as a “Classic Reward” flight straight off the back. Plus they want you to contribute cash too and it seems ridiculous. And then there is how they ultimately upgrade someone anyway, and who they give preference to. All seems like to me that you will be very unlikely to ever upgrade at any reasonable offer. Others may correct me if I am wrong - but I’ve never even bothered trying. (Has anyone on here bid successfully it would be interesting to know.) The other way is to upgrade using your points. But then this will actually cost more points than if you had have booked the flight as a classic reward. I have done this second way of upgrading a couple of times when I have booked classic reward seats in economy, and then near to the flights have seen the flight is completely full in economy leaving no chance of spare seats around me. So instead I have upgraded at the last moment with points. You don’t find out until just before (and I mean just before like matter of hours) if that upgrade is happening. I did that second method very recently Seoul-Sydney where there were spare business seats obviously. But you are talking about a very popular route Perth-London. No expert here, but I would think business class would be taken up by people already having booked reward seats and paying customers. The chances of business seats not only left vacant, but then that you would “win” with a reasonable bid using points (and don’t forget they want you to bid cash too) are in my opinion close to zero. Sorry for bad news. But look, if you take that flight you are on a direct flight to London I’d be pretty happy with that. Qantas service and meals are very good on long flights. I never go hungry on their long haul flights and Qantas cabin service is renowned. Note: This is just my two cents on how I think it works. I’ve never even attempted that “bidding” method so would be happy to know from any on here who have actually had success with it. I would put my effort into credit card churning with sign up bonus points, and save my points until I had enough to redeem them directly for a “Classic Reward” Business seat straight up. (and forget about Classic Plus too).
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Hi graham,
There is a poll at the bottom of the article that I posted above. It tells you what you were interested in - anyone being successful at upgrades. I did find some of the stats interesting.
Also, I too have never attempted the upgrade lottery as a lowly bronze/silver member.
I’ve successfully upgraded with points a few times. I’m a lowly Bronze member too.
Last year I bid for 2 Economy Classic Reward seats to be upgraded to Business Class. Was on Qantas from Perth to Singapore for my wife and a friend. It was a fixed amount of points to upgrade - I did it via the “Manage Booking” section on the Qantas website. The success notification came through for both of them 24hrs prior (I think?).
Before Covid I was able to upgrade a cash economy ticket from LA → Melbourne to Buiness Class using points. Same deal, I just submitted the request (fixed number of points too) and I was successful.
Maybe I just got lucky, but it seemed like a fairly straight forward process.