Star84,
definitely buy the upgradeable one to get to/from SYD as it is not much more and increases your chance domesticly.
The other option is to forget staff travel completely for the domestic sectors and buy a cheap Virgin blue ticket.
Not sure where you are coming from, but if you check during happy hour on their website at 12pm EST, you can get MEL-SYD as cheap as $69 one way, which is the same as economy stand-by on QF for you and much less than what your mum will pay on QF, and the ticket is confirmed.
As for the international sectors, make sure you get a paper ticket, NOT an E-Ticket as you can only use paper tickets on BA if you need to (or prefer to), which also do SYD-BKK-SYD.
If you go another time by yourself, you are better off buying an interline ZED fare ticket from staff travel which can be used on Thai, BA, QF and any other Zed carriers that do the sectors.
The Zed fare ticket is cheaper and gives you more options than the QF ticket.
Unfortunately Zed Fare tickets are not available for parents of QF staff.
Good luck.
Last edited by twiggs; 11th March 2006 at 02:11.