Platinum One is the highest publicly available status tier in the Qantas Frequent Flyer program.

To earn Platinum One status, you need to do a serious amount of flying on Qantas or Jetstar. In return, Qantas offers some serious perks to its most loyal customers.

In this guide, we explain how to earn Qantas Platinum One and how to make the most of the benefits of Qantas’ ultra-elite status tier.

How to earn Qantas Platinum One status

As you would expect, Qantas Frequent Flyer makes it difficult to earn Platinum One status. You would need to earn at least 3,600 status credits during your membership year – and at least 2,700 of those status credits must be from Qantas marketed flights.

That’s around triple the amount of status credits you’d need to earn Qantas Platinum status. To give you an idea, you would need to fly 180 round trips in a year from Melbourne to Sydney on an Economy Red e-Deal ticket, or just over four annual round trips from Sydney to London in First Class.

A Qantas marketed flight is one with a “QF” flight number. Codeshare flights operated by partner airlines do count towards the Qantas flight requirement, as long as you’ve booked on the “QF” flight number. For example, if you flew on an Emirates aircraft from Sydney to Dubai but booked your flight through the Qantas website as QF8415, this counts as a Qantas marketed flight.

Some status credits don’t count towards Platinum One

There are a limited range of ways to earn status credits from things other than flying. Beware that some of these “bonus” status credits might not count towards Platinum One attainment or renewal.

The good news is that the 50 status credits you can earn through the Green Tier program do count. Currently, status credits that you earn as Qantas Loyalty Bonuses also count – but only until 31 December 2024.

Unfortunately, the 20% bonus status credits earned for flights booked using a Qantas Premier Titanium credit card do not count towards Platinum One.

Crucially, though, bonus status credits that you earn through double status credit offers do count towards Platinum One!

Benefits of Platinum One status

So, what do you get as a Platinum One frequent flyer? Well, the short answer is that you can expect Qantas to look after you pretty well when you fly with them. But let’s go into the details…

Of course, as a starting point, you get all of the benefits of Platinum status. These include:

• Access to Qantas domestic Business Lounges and international First Lounges
• Priority check-in (Business or First Class counters)
• Access to premium security lanes where available
• Priority boarding
• Priority baggage (this tends to work better when flying airlines other than Qantas)
• Extra baggage allowance
• 100% Status Bonus points on Qantas, Jetstar and American Airlines flights

You also get Oneworld Emerald status. This gets you lots of benefits on Oneworld partner airlines – although that’s no different to what you get with Qantas Platinum in terms of Oneworld partner airline recognition.

Extra benefits that are exclusive to Platinum One

Platinum One members can also expect a host of extra benefits beyond what you already get with Qantas Platinum status. These include:

• Highest priority in the international upgrade queue, with confirmation up to 7 days before departure
• Ability to choose any seat in your booked cabin from the time of booking
• Complimentary extra legroom seating
• Access to the Qantas VIP Service Team
• Waived Flight Reward assistance and booking fees
• Change to an earlier domestic flight for free when booked on a Flex ticket
• Complimentary Qantas Wine Premium membership
• Invitations to special events (e.g. some Platinum One members received invites to Taylor Swift’s concert in Australia)

For many, direct access to the VIP Service Team is one of the top benefits of Platinum One status. This lets you bypass the Qantas call centre lottery – where you may get through to someone with or without experience in Hobart, Auckland, Manila, Suva or Cape Town – and speak directly with an experienced premium agent in Hobart who only looks after Platinum One and Chairmans Lounge members.

The VIP Service Team also proactively monitors the itineraries of Platinum One members, so that they’re ready to provide solutions in case of flight disruptions.

Share the love with your family and friends

As a Platinum One member, you get to gift Platinum status to a friend or family member. You can update your nominated Platinum member up to once per year. The Platinum One FAQs on the Qantas website have more information about how this works.

In addition, Platinum One members can use their own points to request upgrades on Qantas flights for eligible family members. These upgrade requests enjoy the Platinum One priority level, meaning the upgrade request is more likely to be successful.

Plus, Platinum One members receive two annual lounge invitations that they can gift to family or friends. These invitations can be used to access any Qantas First Lounge, Qantas international Business Lounge or domestic Qantas Club when flying Qantas.

Unpublished Platinum One benefits

Although Qantas doesn’t explicitly advertise this, it proactively upgrades Platinum One frequent flyers from time to time. These surprise upgrades are complimentary, and are often accompanied by a message such as “thanks for your loyalty” on the boarding pass. While there’s no guarantee you’ll get an upgrade on any given flight, anecdotally, Platinum One members on AFF say they might get upgraded on around one in every 10 flights.

That’s not all. Occasionally, Qantas may even offer one-off invitations into the Chairmans Lounge when flying from a domestic port where such a lounge is available at an off-peak time.

When flying internationally, from time to time, a Qantas staff member may escort Platinum One members through the airport. But this depends on the airport.

On board Qantas flights, you might get a special welcome from the Customer Service Manager – but not always.

Perhaps the biggest unpublished benefit is the ability to request additional Classic Flight Reward seats. Platinum frequent flyers can also call Qantas to request the release of Classic Reward seats, but Platinum One frequent flyers are more likely to get these requests approved.

One reason for this is that Platinum One frequent flyers are able to request reward seat releases on flights that are more heavily sold than Platinum members can. As a Platinum One member, you can submit a request if the following commercial Qantas fare classes are available for sale:

Is it worth chasing Platinum One status with Qantas?

There are lots of mixed opinions about this on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum, where lots of Platinum One members share their experiences.

Most Platinum One members value the benefits highly. You get treated well, and the extra perks like exclusive dinner and Chairmans Lounge invitations are nice. But there’s a broad consensus that, for most people, those benefits are not really worth the huge amount of extra flying you need to do above and beyond what’s required to earn Platinum status.

Realistically, you’d need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to earn and maintain Platinum One status on Qantas. With a similar amount of spend and flying, spread across different airlines and alliances, you could probably earn Qantas Platinum, Velocity Platinum, Star Alliance Gold and SkyTeam Elite Plus status.

Nonetheless, the allure of Platinum One status is real. Some AFF members even use Qantas status runs to achieve it. And once you’ve earned Platinum One, it can be hard to give up.

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 economics, aviation & 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.