Article: Less than Half of Qantas Points Are Earned from Flying

[AFF Editor]

Less than Half of Qantas Points Are Earned from Flying is an article written by the AFF editorial team:

Less than Half of Qantas Points Are Earned from Flying

Of the 175 billion Qantas points earned by Qantas Frequent Flyer members in the last financial year, more than half were from non-flying activities.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

 

[Himeno]

I get around 80% of my points from flying. 15% from woolworths and the rest from Qantas Hotel bookings.

 

[Gremlin]

Qantas Frequent Shopper Program. Have a look at the May Investor Day Presentations. Growth in earn and burn forecast in the order of 15% per annum outside of flying, yet only 3% for flying. The 3% figure is less than the forecast growth in capacity - meaning that there will be many, many more points primarily looking to be redeemed on a dwindling number of reward seats.

But hey, lotsa toasters available, amiright?

 

[chrispy3276]

Makes sense. I managed to (just) hit PC+ in my last membership year, and am on track to do it again this year. Earned a max of 5k points from flying over that time. And no CC churn either

 

[kookaburra75]

Makes sense. I managed to (just) hit PC+ in my last membership year, and am on track to do it again this year. Earned a max of 5k points from flying over that time. And no CC churn either

Much the same for MrsK and me - we only get 5% of our points from flying. We're at 60% towards PCP, with still just over six months to go. We then use them for travel, and get the SCs as a bonus.

 

[levelnine]

Earning points from flying is so passé.

Will renew PCP & Platinum this membership year without a single point earned from flying.

 

[RooFlyer]

I get close to 100% of my Qantas points from flying. I refuse to be sucked into / handcuffed to the Qantas merchant ecosystem.

 

[elanshin]

I've gotten the bulk of mine on the ground. When supplier's don't charge to use CC, everything goes through it. There's been many a 6 digit payments go through CC for points. If my suppliers going to eat the card fee, free points for me.

 

[Seat0B]

Earning points from flying is so passé.

Will renew PCP & Platinum this membership year without a single point earned from flying.

How do you get the SC to renew platinum without flying? Asking for a friend….

 

[Keanie]

We would like Qantas to release more international flights where we can use our FF points.
Some of the flights require incredible amounts of FF points to get a seat. Wish the old days were back.

 

[levelnine]

How do you get the SC to renew platinum without flying? Asking for a friend….

Award flights. They don't earn points, but earn plenty of SCs, especially when booked during DSC periods. Much cheaper than cash fares to change flight dates/destinations too .... AA awards are particularly cheap: $0 change fees.

 

[Seat0B]

Award flights. They don't earn points, but earn plenty of SCs, especially when booked during DSC periods. Much cheaper than cash fares to change flight dates/destinations too .... AA awards are particularly cheap: $0 change fees.

Oh Ok thanks, I knew that one. Thought you meant without flying at all. Dang it.

 

[MMB]

The holy grail is to fly business/first class internationally on the long haul flights. Between Velocity/Fly Buys and Qantas/Everyday rewards we've just managed that for Europe next year. We will be going across Business class Melbourne to Paris and back Vienna to Melbourne with Vienna Dubai economy, Dubai Sydney First/Business class and Sydney to Melbourne economy. It will cost us, roughly, the price of equivalent economy air fares in fees.

With purchasing It is a matter of being judicious when you purchase things like non perishables so they are on special and for maximum points. Then have a points credit card that adds points on top of points. It takes a few years to build up the points but it is worth it if you can do it. The other thing is to get the Qantas Health app for your smart phone so your points are, continually, clicking over. They won't time out.

With getting flights it is a matter of being flexible on dates and timing when flights are most likely to be available. From our experience this was at 11 months out and then roughly seven months out. Is there an article that discusses this?

 

[Vatec]

Fewer*

 

[Oubline]

This makes me feel out of touch.. I’d earn less than 1% from flying, and the rest from churning. One credit card bonus is so much higher than what you get for taking a flight.

And it gets reinforced because I tend to use points instead of paying for flights so earn no points, just SC as PC+

 

[anyonebutqantas]

It's all about maximising card spend.

 

[justinbrett]

Fewer*

It's less.

 

[Berlin]

For me, it’s about half half. Credit card churn, wine purchases and a bit from Woolies but then also quite a fair amount of flying in J class (I’m just over 2000 SC for the current membership year)- mostly from OW partners rather than Qantas itself. The latter might change again if QF international was to ever have prices again that are half way reasonable- we shall see.

 

[geoffs]

Makes sense. I managed to (just) hit PC+ in my last membership year, and am on track to do it again this year. Earned a max of 5k points from flying over that time. And no CC churn either

I got into Points Club in 2021 and hit PC+ in 2022. On Track to PC+ again with 250,000 Qantas points collected already this year with 6 months to go. No flight points or CC churn this year either but my main source of earn - Amex Qantas Ultimate card is cutting back on points from 12/1/24. Instead of 1.25 points/$, it will only be 1.25 points/$ for first 100,000 Qantas points and then only 1 Qantas point per dollar spent after that. That will create a huge hole in my points bin.

Seems like everywhere is being devalued. Over 2.25 Million points in the bin and still can't get two Business Class flight to Europe.

Very frustrating.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

To be honest I am surprised that figure is as high as it is. Arguably it is higher than most major airlines out there where I would reckon 80% of frequent flyer miles are earned on the ground. Which I suppose begs the question, why is that figure so high? I think part of the problem are things like frequent flyer miles aren't as in your face as they are elsewhere in the world. For instance, yes you can earn Qantas Frequent Flyer miles shopping at Woolworths, but only if you manually go into your account and activate the automatic Qantas transfer. Similarly, yes there are Qantas branded credit cards, but they are mixed in with a bunch of other rewards credit cards which either don't convert to frequent flyer programs (i.e. simple cash back) or do convert but again, you need to go into your account and manually transfer over.

Relatedly, some of this has to do with the amount of coverage these programs get in the media. Whereas it seems every few days the likes of Brian Kelly are on Good Morning America or elsewhere, there isn't the same level of coverage here in Australia. In the US there are dozens of major blogs which cover this and spend considerably on advertising on the various social medias like One Referral at a Time, The Points Dude, View from the Wing, etc.

At the same time, I think there has been a lot of negatively publicity about QF in general and more specifically about QFF (i.e. the lack of award seats fiasco the media seems to be harping on about). To be frank, I am not seeing such struggles, and I think Qantas actually has a fairly competitive award chart (something which cannot be said for the likes of DL or UA where prices can be millions of points for a single J trip). Qantas Points club is a smart idea, I think providing status credits to people flying Qantas or partner (i.e. BA Avios) issued Qantas classic awards is a good idea and is something that UA and DL have been doing for some time. Could Qantas do more to incentivize the collection of points? Absolutely. One need only look elsewhere and see that points could be used to pay for things like neighbour free seating or priority seat selection for instance. Offering members to buy into the lounge by paying with points and making that the only way to get in (other than with status or flying BusinessFirst or GlobalFirst) would also make the points stand out.

-RooFlyer88