The amount of times I’ve been asked who has a better seat/product on the east coast – west coast service is crazy, so very soon I will find out which one is the better product. Both Qantas and Virgin have new products on the services, so I’m very interested to see how they compare. I’ve flown both products a hand full of times now but never to Perth.

I’ve also flown Virgin’s new Business Class a number of times now. I flew it to Los Angeles and absolutely loved the product so it’ll be good to fly it again but this time during the day.

For this flight, I booked a flexible Economy ticket and elected to use a complimentary upgrade as a Platinum member. At the time of booking, there was no upgrades or award space available, so I set an alert on Expertflyer and hoped for the best. Virgin release award seats 24 hours out, and you can almost guarantee you’ll get an award seat or upgrade clearing.

To get home, I’ll be taking the red-eye service to Brisbane. I think I might be one of the very few who actually want to do a red-eye service… I’ll also check out the newish Qantas Business lounge in Perth, one of the very few I haven’t been to yet.

At the time of booking there was no award space at all but as Platinum, you can request a seat to be opened. I had done it a few times now but for this flight, a few of the agents wouldn’t budge. So what do you do? ring up and call again. This proved to work and I chatted to a very friendly agent who was more than happy to help.

I booked this flight with 36,000 points and $40 something worth of tax. If there was availability I would of much rather of liked to use Alaska Miles as the redemption rates are only 20,000.

Who do you think had the better product?