Article: Only 17% of Ansett Global Rewards Members Feared of Airline Bankruptcy

[AFF Editor]

Only 17% of Ansett Global Rewards Members Feared of Airline Bankruptcy is an article written by AFF editorial staff:

Only 17% of Ansett Global Rewards Members Feared of Airline Bankruptcy

In the years prior to Ansett's bankruptcy, most Ansett Global Rewards members were blissfully unaware of the risk of losing their points.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

 

[justinbrett]

I made a cash booking with AN on 10 Sep 2001. I had to pay by 11 Sep 01 but due to the events of the day I forgot to do the bank transfer so lost the booking but none of my cash (unlike many others).

Woke up on 12 Sep to see AN had collapsed.

Back then I flew AN exclusively, but was a NZ Air points member so I didn't lose my points. Rebooked that trip on QF and joined QFF.

People love to bash the airlines for their decisions but many forget airlines going bust is a real thing. And despite what it says in this article, I would not expect to receive compensation for my points if the airline goes bust, I'm just one of millions of creditors who had a non-cash asset, I'm at the back of the line.

I used to hoard my QF points but I'm now using them as I earn - I think it's too risky.

 

[Lynda2475]

"most Ansett frequent flyers would have tried to use up their points before the airline entered voluntary administration on the 12th of September, 2001."

Unfortunately it wasn't so simple even for those that did use them. I had cashed in 90% of my points on a RTW award which included no Ansett flights (all legs were on United, Singapore, and AirNZ) in July.

But back in 2001 tickets were issued manually (remember those funny looking carbon books which had once sheet for each leg); and redemptions went off to a long queue prioritised by flight departure.

My redemption hadn't been ticketed and so wasn't honoured, even though the points were deducted and taxes had been paid. A friend who booked the same trip 1 day earlier than me was lucky to receive her ticket in time.

I still blame Air NZ for the collapse and as such have not spent $1 with them since.

 

[luxury-lizard]

Well I was one of the lucky - managed to use all my AN points just a month before they went bust (by hap chance) - many of my colleagues lost millions.

 

[RooFlyer]

I was in the USA on work at the time, so blissfully unaware of what was happening in Oz at the time. Forget how many Ansett points I lost - but all from work flying, so easy come, easy go.

In those days Western Mining had an Ansett rep in its Melbourne head office doing bookings directly for us, so not much chance of flying the alternative

 

[mel-world]

As you can see, I joined their Golden Wing early (Life Member 380) as I used to work for an Ansett non-airline subsidiary so flew them all the time, including many of their excellent J class 747 flights to HKG. (I still use their shoe bags that they distributed with amenity kits.)

I was living in Singapore in 2001 and travelling a lot so was not following the Ansett (NZ) issues until my 300k points when down the drain one day. That was a lot of travel's worth of points in those days. Lesson learnt the hard way.

 

[Myrna]

Well I was one of the lucky - managed to use all my AN points just a month before they went bust (by hap chance) - many of my colleagues lost millions.

Same for late MIL. She always flew Y with NZ, SQ, and UA - once or twice a year she would do a RTW with them to Europe and the US (and to the far flung corners of China, Russia and Africa to work in orphanages). Occasionally they would upgrade her to J and she was thrilled. She was very thankful that she used up all her points just before the collapse of AN.

 

[dajop]

Whilst I did use some of my Ansett GR points, I did lose around 100K points from memory.

But I'm circumspect, whilst in other programs I haven't lost a single point (except a few orphaned points here and there) over the years I've lost far far more value from devaluations than I ever did when my AN GR points balance was wiped out.

 

[kookaburra75]

Well I was one of the lucky - managed to use all my AN points just a month before they went bust (by hap chance) - many of my colleagues lost millions.

I lost around 200,000 points when Ansett went belly up, many were earned through my Diner Club card spend. I had redeemed a lot of points for fights, especially going across to NZ. A friend lost 800,000 points that he was building up for a couple of J RTW tickets for him and his wife.

The biggest loss was the Golden Wing Lounge, which I felt was a cut above the Qantas Club.

 

[RooFlyer]

The biggest loss was the Golden Wing Lounge, which I felt was a cut above the Qantas Club.

Can still visit it in MEL

 

[Forg]

I used to hoard my QF points but I'm now using them as I earn - I think it's too risky.

QF’s got your interests at heart, limiting your ability to use them on flights in order to ensure they make record profits & stay in business & your points stay viable! They’re doing it for you!!

 

[oz_mark]

The reason Velocity was originally created in a trust structure was because of the issues folk had when Ansett/Global Rewards went kaboom.

 

[justinbrett]

QF’s got your interests at heart, limiting your ability to use them on flights in order to ensure they make record profits & stay in business & your points stay viable! They’re doing it for you!!

Nah, I've burnt through about 3/4 of a million since the start of covid. I need more points!

(All flights and only classic awards, in case you're wondering)

 

[SYD]

In my former company, some muppet in Finance came up with the brilliant idea of switching corporate accounts from QF to AN around 2000. I was flying ~4x a year to the US in J (and actually very little domestic) but achieved AN Diamond around July 2001 .

There was actually a lot of chatter for weeks leading up to the collapse about using points but as @Lynda2475 said, it wasn’t that easy back then. Needless to say, my 200k pts were never seen again. At the time, that seemed an awful lot but I’ve earned and burned millions across QF, UA and VA since then.

At least I can say I’d learnt the lesson and quickly shuffled 50% of my VA1 points over to SQ to hedge my odds.

 

[Zips-Numerate-Viscosity]

I burned 300K velocity points at the start of the pandemic on Apple technology, which I've since sold. Probably got myself 0.1c/point if I'm lucky.

 

[SYD]

I burned 300K velocity points at the start of the pandemic on Apple technology, which I've since sold. Probably got myself 0.1c/point if I'm lucky.

Well, we could possibly embarrass all those folks who ordered gazillions of gift cards (that strangely all turned up and then probably spent on toilet paper during Covid).

 

[Forg]

^ Way back in the back-then, with whatever frequent flyer points scheme our credit card was using, if you got gift-cards using the points it cost to fly somewhere overseas in Y & if you could’ve cashed those gift-cards in you could’ve bought the Y tickets and had a reasonable amount of change … *yells at cloud*

 

[CaptJCool]

Back in the day when points were worth something a couple of SQ to Vienna flights with Bub....

was my first experience of discovering miles based freebies because Zurich was in the next zone over and didn’t have enough points to fly there.... but could do Vienna for less points as it’s closer to Australia.

now, flying to Vienna how did you get there ?

via Zurich Of course......


when it all went down, did about 80,000 mostly collected via Diners (2 points per $, if I recall, and went you trotted into the adelaide office off Leigh st to pay in cash ahha). My that was when earn rates were like gold! Was in the twilight zone for some time while Diners comprehended what was happening and cut off supply over there eventually stitching up a deal with QF

PS I DO KNOW of someone who least the million FF Points in that wash-up...

 

[http_x92]

This was well before my time, I only knew of Ansett when it was a sponsor of the 2000 Olympics.

Looks like there were interesting stories about Ansett well before it went bust. Sounds like Diners was a decently known card provider back then as well. RTW bookings with Golden Wing points the hard way before bookings went digital, didn’t know that was possible…

 

[JohnM]

I lost c. 300K points, and I was also in the air on the last AN flight MEL-PER when they went bust at 2400h EST. I was in J and there was no catering as the catering outfit had hit the wall earlier that day or the day prior. We all knew that the crew were going to be out of a job very soon.

It was a grim flight.

I can't complain too much. I had worked the AN FF scheme fairly solidly.

Anyone remember Upgrade Certificates? It was the only way to get an UPG.

You had to phone and they would mail them out to you. 4K points a pop and only valid for 1 year. You could only UPG at checkin or the lounge prior to the flight.

Being in PER and travelling east for work fairly frequently, but unpredictably, and restricted to buying whY fares on AN as the DOM corporate provider, I always worked hard to ensure I had plenty of UPG Certificates at hand - but not so many as to risk expiry. I'd rock up to the Golden Wing lounge (nice and early), pull out a certificate and request an UPG. I can't remember ever missing out. My work colleagues just could not figure it out.

And, in all that time, I only ever had one expire.

Aaahhh... - AFF-type tricks before AFF existed.

I also took the family on a round-Australia points fare. Remember those?

Then, around 2000, during/after marriage breakdown, I used a bundle of points on head-clearing domestic travel.

I had been holding on to the 300K points with the aim of extending that to INT travel, but that was not to be.

C'est la vie.