Qantas has announced that they plan to offer a series of dedicated frequent flyer redemption flights across their network with seats only available to those redeeming Qantas points.
Continue reading: Qantas “Points Plane” Flight: A380 Bookable Exclusively With Points
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Does this mean Qantas expects Australia to fall out of the world cup at the quarter finals?
Not sure I agree with you that the premium seats will sell out "in seconds". Even if a Qantas loyalty member is eager to experience business or first class, why would they prefer this flight in particular:
- They would have no flexibility around travel dates and destination
- They would need to find return flight as well, which may not be available for redemption and expensive if booked as a cash one-way ticket
- They don't get any discount versus the miles needed for a standard "classic award"
- They would have to fork out to cover the substantial carrier charges
Loving qantas isn’t really an option if you like in Australia - virgin is a ways behind on domestic network and international partners and you get Qantas points for almost everything up to and including breathing in Australia. It’s harder to rack up a lot of points that aren’t qantas ones.
Whilst redemption rates may be high and surcharges not great, values aren’t bad given how easy it is to rack up the the point.
As an airline it is pretty good. It still serves a full meal with wine or beer in economy domestically, at least on major routes; and the food isn’t bad. Domestic lounges are good, at least where refurbished, if busy. The international route network is acceptable (i’d appreciate a MEL-HND and a JV with JAL and CX but you can’t have everything).
Basically if you live in Australia you can love Qantas or be a free agent or make a lot of compromises to be loyal to someone else.
CX has two pairs of HKG-CTS flights exclusively for redemption this year
https://www.asiamiles.com/en/discover/offers/detail.earn.html/air/special-flight-1904
It’s an especially clever idea when you consider that the hard costs for the charter’s ferry flights are baked into the charter cost.
@Greg Dunning - nothing to do with world cup as far as I know. MotoGP in Japan in the days before, with the following round is near Melbourne.
@Ed - “you get Qantas points for almost everything, up to, and including breathing, in Australia.”
Literally laughed out loud at that. You are bang on correct there, mate!
@Ed
All true - just that there isn't much of an alternative. Ever tried to use Virgin Australia Velocity points for flights recently?
Ben - this is because of the Rugby World Cup in Tokyo at the same time. Qantas is a sponsor of the Wallabies, the Australian national rugby team. The flight date is a few days before the Quarter Finals, so it’s perfectly timed for Rugby fans wanting to get over to Tokyo. I guarantee you it’ll be a very fun flight especially in Business!