Qantas has just released an extra 6,000 Classic Reward seats on its flights to Rome and London, for travel during the 2024 European summer! This includes around 900 new Business Class reward seats.

The airline has also just released a large number of new Business and First Class reward seats to the United States, for travel next year.

The new Classic Reward seats to and from Europe have been released on every Qantas flight between Australia, Rome and London between June and August 2024. Each flight has around 4 Business Classic Reward seats available, and lots of extra Economy reward seats as well. These seats are available on a first come, first served basis.

June-August is the most popular time of the year for travel to Europe, and Qantas could easily sell those seats to full-fare-paying customers. So, this latest move represents a real opportunity cost to Qantas. Nonetheless, the airline has decided to do this in response to recent customer feedback about the difficulty of finding reward availability. It’s the first part of an $80 million investment in customer experience improvements that was earmarked last month by the new CEO, Vanessa Hudson.

“We’ve listened to the feedback from members about Frequent Flyer seats and how much they value them, and we’re investing to create more at the times they most want to travel. There’s a lot of work happening across Qantas on improvements like this that we look forward to delivering for customers,” Hudson said.

Some examples of available Classic Reward seats

Here are some examples of seats that we’ve found, for example, from Sydney to London on QF1:

You may even be able to book up to four Business seats on the same flight. For example, we found this availability from Perth to London:

There are also lots of new Premium Economy, Business and First Class seats available on Qantas’ trans-Pacific flights to destinations including Los Angeles and Dallas/Fort Worth. You can even get up to two First Classic Reward seats on many flights between Sydney or Melbourne and Los Angeles.

The Qantas Classic Reward seats to/from North America appear to be available for travel dates between April and June 2024.

The release of seats to and from the USA is being discussed on this AFF thread.

These seats are unlikely to last long, so get in quick if you’re interested in booking something! 😉

How to book Qantas Classic Reward seats

The new Classic Reward seats released today are available to book on the Qantas website.

Remember to look for Classic Reward seats, which are different to Points Plus Pay flights. When viewing flights on the Qantas website, you can select the “Reward seats” filter to show only Classic Reward options:

See our guide to finding Classic Reward seats for detailed instructions!

50% off Points Plus Pay flights in premium cabins

Until Friday 27 October 2023, Qantas is also giving 50% off all Points Plus Pay bookings in Premium Economy, Business or First.

With the 50% discount, you would be getting roughly 1.22 cents per Qantas point worth of value on Points Plus Pay seats – rather than the usual ~0.61 cents per point.

In general, Points Plus Pay bookings require more points than Classic Reward seats. When redeeming Qantas points for Classic Reward seats, you can often get around 3-7 cents per point worth of value (compared to the cost of an equivalent commercial airfare).

However, Points Plus Pay can be used to book any available seat on any Qantas flight. So, this option provides more flexibility for times when there are no Classic Reward seats available on your preferred flights.

Changing and cancelling Qantas Classic Reward bookings

Keep in mind that it’s relatively easy to cancel Qantas Classic Reward bookings! As long as you cancel before the departure date, you’d just need to pay a cancellation fee of 6,000 Qantas points per person. You’ll get a refund of the remaining points and all of the taxes & carrier charges.

You can also change Qantas Classic Reward bookings for a fee of 5,000 points per passenger. However, to change your flight, you’d need to find new reward seat availability at the time of making the change.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.