Several weeks ago, Qantas Frequent Flyer announced some major changes, which will be implemented over the coming months. The changes are mostly negative, though there are also some positive adjustments.
Continue reading: Qantas Frequent Flyer Devaluation: Higher Award Costs, With A Silver Lining
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
"To me, the bigger issue is just that Qantas Frequent Flyer is an all-around crappy program, and there’s little reason to participate in it, unless you don’t have a choice."
^
This!
But, yes, I have to (sort of). And if lounge access and status abroad are among your objectives, the alternatives can be slower to achieve.
I would say that the best use for qantas points is for those who want to fly elal to Israel especially since alaska ended their partnership with them. Do we know if these redemptions are being devalued?
Agreed qantas is a crappy program. It's a function of them having almost a monopoly. Like air nz does as well.
Overpriced awards. Will be looking to see if the hnl-syd on Jetstar gets cheaper. That would be the only award that would be of interest to me. Although I did get my son a jfk-akl award in Y for 51k points. But certainly nothing of interest in their premium cabins. They used to release quite a few nz/au-us awards to Alaska in J but that seems to have dried up me. Just tells me they can fill their premium
cabins with paying customers.
The only use that program has is when they run the double status credit offer and you can get oneworld gold reasonably cheaply with a couple of nz-au flights in J if you plan the long way round.
Ben, from an American perspective you are 100% right. QFF is crappy. I don't know why any American would even consider it.
But QFF isn't aimed at you. It's aimed at Australians.
It's not much use telling us Australians that AAdvantage or Aeroplan offer way better redemptions (which they do), when there is not a single credit card in Australia that allows us to earn AAdvantage, and there is exactly one that allows us to earn Aeroplan.
Really, our only choices are QFF, Virgin Velocity, and to a lesser extent Emirates Skywards and Singapore KrisFlyer. The last one would be fine, if only their miles didn't expire!
The thing about QFF is that the point redemption rates are largely irrelevant. Points are really easy to earn (for Australians) if you put in a bit of effort. Credit card sign-up bonuses of 100,000 points or so are common. Australians can earn QFF points on your groceries, petrol, health insurance, home insurance, mortgage, and god knows what else these days.
The real problems with the programme are that:
1) Reward seats are almost impossible to find in international premium cabins in/out of Australia. Demand massively exceeds supply. They're quite difficult to find even in economy for much of the year.
2) The cash fees on reward seats are very high, destroying the value of the programme.
Personally I'd be OK with increasing the redemption rates if they also substantially increased reward seat availability. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case here.
I've heard that QF points are basically Australia's second currency considering how many people use their CCs for everything. I could imagine that would be frustrating competition.
The two best uses of QF points I've found so far:
1. Booking Emirates premium cabins for less than what Emirates charges
2. Holding an end of the schedule award when it first releases until AA can see it, then cancelling it and booking it thru AA. Granted, this requires "wasting" an obscene amount of points but if you excitedly transferred those points from a CC for a QF F award and then later changed your mind and now have orphaned points with no use... :..(
The notion that somehow programs should be entitled to devalue points once every few years is one that's worth challenging - yes costs might be on the rise, but the decrease in value of points seems to be outstripping the increase in cash fare prices over comparable periods, suggesting ultimately it's really just about greed.
RichM, you’ve nailed it on the head. Qantas - easy to earn points, really hard to spend.
For travel redemption it’s a lot of people chasing not many seats, and when you get one the fees are usually savage. When I joined QFF over 20 years ago it had less than 2 million members, now it’s over 15 million worldwide. Over 50% of the Australian population are members.
It used to be relatively easy in the distant past to get say, two seats in biz in Australia near your preferred dates. Nowadays finding two seats in an entire year is nigh on impossible, OR they want an exhorbitant number of points.
Qantas have reduced flight frequency, and aircraft size on many routes, further limiting availability. Travelled recently to Auckland, no available FF seats, yet only 6 of the 12 seats on the clapped out B737 were occupied, and one of those was off duty crew. No FFseats avail, and the aircraft goes out 50% empty in Biz.
Some success has been had using QFF points for intra-European flights on Finnair, and we occassionally convert a pile of points into boxes of wine, and the occasional rental car (at an appalling redemption rate), but otherwise, without a local Star Alliance or SkyTeam program, there is no alternative. Virgin Australia are better within Australia, but have limited international alliances, and not great credit card tie ups.
It’s the credit card spend that pushes most of our points into QFF, and stops the points expiring. We also belong to the Aegean Miles & Bonus program (Star Alliance) because the points don’t expire, essential when there is no credit card in Australia that will drive points into it.
Does Qantas have decent availability to partner awards? Off the cuff their pricing doesn't seem terrible.
I agree with everything you and RichM have said. QFF is aimed at Australians not people elsewhere. It's incredibly easy to earn points and difficult to spend them on flights you actually want. Other programmes offer better redemption rates, in some cases on QF flights, if not better availability (SYD-AKL 15K on AS [a sweet spot, it's 50k from MEL] and 41K on QFF), but getting points with them is no simple matter.
I've taken to spending my QF points when I can (!) and 'banking' my assessed 'cash' value of the flight to use to buy points in more suitable programmes.
If you want oneworld elite status and most of your flying is AU domestic, QFF seems to be the easiest in which to earn it (and status that gives you AA/AS lounge access in the US). I'm close to lifetime gold (for whatever time I have left) so that will slacken one of the bonds that ties me to them. I have accounts with VA, SQ, AA, AS and AF'/KLM and I'm tinkering with using them (and earning in them) and their general pros and cons. As others have noted there's not much choice for credit card spend other than QF and VA, although there's Amex (11 or 12 airlines) and some bank in-house rewards programmes that support SQ and CX, and occasionally others.
Its a monopoly in Australia
Decades ago I was an active highly engaged member
Today I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole
I feel sorry for our Ozzie friends
I do everything I can to avoid them now and used to be a big fan when they had reasonable supply of premium award seats.I will be flying other carriers to and from and within Australia and may likely never fly with them again as a result
So many things wrong with the program its sad.Great memories though when things were awesome.My last First Class flight with them was canceled back in April 2023 back to LA.Can you imagine my reaction when they asked me if I would fly coach to Dallas instead and offered me nothing.
I re-booked with another carrier home next day in First to LA
Not to mention that if you are red level QF you don’t even see some of the reward options and if you do, often F and J are limited to one seat AND QF wont allow third party site to report on how many seat are available and compared to VQ there domestic pricing is never cheaper
Whenever you see Qantas making 'enhancements' you can be certain it will be bad news for its QFF members.
Despite the little scraps of red meat thrown to its members, this announcement is very bad news.
A few more seats (maybe) thrown into the mix being economy seats in off-peak times and dates, especially on its LCC subsidiary Jetstar.
Some 'premium' seats on a few international partners (premium economy, not business or first) if you can find them.
Massively increased 'carrier imposed charges' (for Qantas' coffers) which truly rival British Airways.
I share Ben's dismal take on this pig of a FF program, but hey, they will get away with it. I can hear their shareholders loudly applauding in the background.
Not for nothing is Qantas known as the Queen of Mean in some quarters.
That points example for SYD-AKL was in business class, although it was 737 biz so no lay-flat seats.
You can never be certain that exact seat will be returned to inventory. Risky business!
I think what they were saying about Premium Economy on several partners (including AF) was that previously you couldn't book it, and that will change. Up to now you have been able to book business (I have seen AF business seat availability SIN-CDG in a QF search). Your point about 'if you can find them' is a constant with QF.
For our American and other friends, what everyone is saying is true: QFF is TRULY abysmal. During the last 12 year period, I only managed to snag one QF flight redemption ex Australia (CNS - POM). An obscure and not so busy route. Just ONE successful redemption out of 500+ search attempts over a 12 year period. Now, compare that to my 100% successful redemption rate on Virgin (and associated partners such as SQ, EY, HA, DL).
I teach aviation management strategies at an australian university. (*- see end) When covering FF programs I use Ben’s excellent comment about Qantas FF “ one of the worst value FF programs” and take the students through why this is the case. Also why its a huge revenue earner for QF- take a look at their annual reports ( especially 2023) to see why this is the case. As others have said australians earn points largely through non-aviation purchases so there is a vast amount of “points” sitting out there that will never be claimed, but QF have earned revenue from Flybuys, amex, Coles and others.
Oh well, in the 1990s I did huge amounts of flying ( 1-2 long hauls a week) but no FF points or even lounge access: I had to pay for that crappy BA club lounge at LHR.
(*)how life goes. Several ( make that many) use OMAAT in their assignments. Strictly speaking thats a no-no but I let that pass.
(*) and more than a few graduates have found employment with Qantas, Virgin and Jetstar in their commercial departments. So blame me in lart for their revenue management knowledge!
If you now use Qantas points to fly El Al, you will be given a detour to The Hague.
In 30 years of actively looking for points flights we have scored exactly ONE business flight YVR-SYD on upper deck 747. It was crappy but cheap. (Will be flying FRA-SFO in March on upper Deck of LH 747-8 so will be able to enjoy I hope).
Purchased a business fare from Mel-Auk (on A330 overnight) and the (people without parents) switched it to a crapped out 737 with 4" tilt instead.
Absolutely NO LOSS TO THE WORLD. Horrid Airline.
As far as I’m aware BA have never had paid access to its lounges. Not sure which airline at LHR you’re referring to
The problem with QFF is their lack of capacity. There is just no need offering a more competitive ffp as there are no premium seats to sell as award seat. On international flights it’s a one in a lifetime seeing a business seat going out empty (I know from flying on standby with them regularly). Unsold premium seats go to the large number of points or cash upgrade requests which still seems to be a better deal for Qantas than selling those seats as awards beforehand.
They've realised that they're better-off auctioning those unsold seats for cash than letting people redeem them for points 330 days out. When booking Qantas A380 or Emirates code-share business class tickets I'm frequently offered the chance to upgrade to first class for cash before the booking is finalised, and often at a discount. Cash is king, and QFF is pretty crappy.
Wasn't there an alliance-wide Australian credit card used by *A as a pilot for potentially building an international product? Is that still around?
LOL LOL LOL LOL
QFF is not aimed at Americans ... thankfully. And try getting your status levels up to have the competitive edge for FF tickets/upgrades.
It probably won't & as someone else said, Aussies can't really earn AA miles as efficiently as US flyers er.. eligible credit card customers.
Of course you are a University lecturer. We all believe that when you say this:
“QF have earned revenue from Flybuys, amex, Coles and others.” Virgin are the partners of Flybuys and Coles - so go back to the university that you probably started and teach your 2 year old what you don’t know.
@Ben, you said, 'I do find it funny how Qantas is increasing award costs, while at the same time increasing the number of points that certain members earn...', but there is a rationale there, at least as I see it. Points earn is distance and class of travel/fare bucket based so earning doesn't rise as fares rise (as happens on most US carriers' programmes). So what they have done is sort of maintain the relativities between what you earn on a revenue ticket and how much an award ticket costs (and, effectively devaluing credit card and other earning that reflects dollars spent).
None of that excuses the lamentable reward availability from Australia, particularly on QF metal. (I did score a reasonable AA US transcon redemption for next month, and there are seats to be had on partners' long haul and domestic flights, including intra-Europe on AF/KLM.)
Yes, issued by HSBC, earning 0.8 points/miles per AUD on 6 or 7 *A airlines. It also offers *A gold status relatively easily in the first year (much more difficult after that, AUD 40K a year I think).
Yes - the HSBC Star Alliance credit card. That was the one I was referring to. It is the only Australian credit card that allows Aeroplan miles to be earned.
It's decent in the first year, but after that, has a very high fee for quite modest benefits.