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October 24, 2026 — 5:00am

Not the flex you think it is

Qantas first class.

My wife and I (both Platinum Qantas Frequent Flyers) were flying from Brisbane to London via Sydney, first class, but noticed we’d only been given 90 minutes by Qantas to transit to our international flight. Not wanting to risk the relatively tight connection and the related knock-on effects to our plans in Europe, we requested an earlier flight to Sydney. There weren’t business class flights available, so I asked to be downgraded to economy for the domestic flight. Downgrading our fare was not possible, we were told. We ended up flying the evening before, costing us an extra $900 (plus overnight accommodation costs), despite having “fully flexible” tickets.…