Are Qantas Frequent Fliers being penalised by One World Airlines

[RichardMEL]

Good post.

According to one of the latest QF reports I read - less than 30% of all points redemptions are made for flights. Whereas, 10 years ago, this figure was likely closer to 90%.

I suspect two big factors involved here:

1. Reduced availability means less points CAN be spent for redemptions of flight awards, or in fact people get so sick of looking and finding nothing they give up and...

2. The massive pushing of other redemption options from Hotel Stays to Toasters pushes a lot of people to think well I can't get that flight to Hawaii I wanted so yeah I'll buy a new Vacuum or gift cards at woolies.

That QF has decided to limit more premium seats to higher status holders (while skewing earning towards their own flights) shows the focus they feel works for them. Even as a benefactor (as in I've had little issue getting F seats recently) I don't always agree that it's the "right" way to run things but that's a corporate policy. In many ways, rewarding your most frequent yielders (see what I did there? ) is a win/win.. the elite punter is happy and thus ensures, or hopefully anyway, continued spend to maintain.

I also suepect that now that everyone and their dog are members and use stuff like EDR (sorry Wollies Rewards) and the like means your very infrequent flyers get modest totals, find they can't do perhaps what they wanted and either let the points lapse or spend on (2) above which again yields well for QF Loyalty.

Me I still use mine for awards and upgrades and still find *some* value, but I also combine with other FF programs to provide options and not be wedded to the one place or alliance. Just the past few days I've combined QFF awards and Star to do QF/MH/TG/SQ flying all in premium cabins and working out quite nicely.

It always helps to have options.

 

[rock86]

Qantas is a dog of a FF program.
I only participate because banks are giving away silly amounts of bonus sign-up points for free or almost free.
I now have no expectation of EVER finding a QF premium flight but I do see enough One World availability to dissuade me from complete abandonment. e.g MEL - LON is showing plenty of J availability for next October

+1, I share the exact same sentiment

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Good post.

I suspect two big factors involved here:

1. Reduced availability means less points CAN be spent for redemptions of flight awards, or in fact people get so sick of looking and finding nothing they give up and...

2. The massive pushing of other redemption options from Hotel Stays to Toasters pushes a lot of people to think well I can't get that flight to Hawaii I wanted so yeah I'll buy a new Vacuum or gift cards at woolies.

That QF has decided to limit more premium seats to higher status holders (while skewing earning towards their own flights) shows the focus they feel works for them. Even as a benefactor (as in I've had little issue getting F seats recently) I don't always agree that it's the "right" way to run things but that's a corporate policy. In many ways, rewarding your most frequent yielders (see what I did there? ) is a win/win.. the elite punter is happy and thus ensures, or hopefully anyway, continued spend to maintain.

Think of it like two companies.

Qantas - the owner of seats
Qantas Loyalty - the buyer of seats

Qantas, the airline, has a job to sell seats at the highest yield possible.
Qantas Loyalty is a buyer of seats, and thus an internal distribution channel. Obviously, Qantas Loyalty pays rock-bottom rates for these seats, as they're seen as distressed inventory and seats the airline may otherwise never sell (thus, a perishable product which affects RASK and a host of other airline metrics).

If Qantas gave virtually free reign to Qantas Loyalty for seats - it would mean significant impacts to ticket sales revenue. Revenue management would basically view it like this: How much is Mr RichardMEL worth to us over the past 12 months? How much is he worth to us over the next 12 months? Will not giving this seat to him affect revenue? If chances of affecting revenue are under xx%, you won't get the seat no matter how hard you try. After all, you're already loyal and past behavioural patterns suggest that you will likely continue to spend regardless of the outcome of receiving a J/F seat at classic award prices.

2. The massive pushing of other redemption options from Hotel Stays to Toasters pushes a lot of people to think well I can't get that flight to Hawaii I wanted so yeah I'll buy a new Vacuum or gift cards at woolies.

Qantas Loyalty need more non-air redemptions to cater towards the ever-growing points balances. Remember that QF Loyalty is under IFRS15 accounting standards, and only the marketing portion of a point value can be recognised immediately (which can be negative in many cases) - with the remainder of the point value deferred until the redemption has been completed. For this reason alone - we will continue to see more options to use points on and increases in the cost of points required for awards. It's the only way to keep the current model sustainable without changing the core underlying FFP proposition or re-inventing the currency entirely.

As for the topic at hand - Qantas members likely are being penalised by other OW airlines because of commercial issues (eg: QF/EK protectionism against QR, increasingly more codeshares with non-alliance members etc). As a frequent flyer member it's obvious that QF biz/first inventory is highly limited, and even then it goes to QFF members.

Airlines are complex to run.
Airline Loyalty programs are just as complex.

Personally, I think QF members get screwed every day, but mainly because they screw themselves by not looking at alternatives.

 

[me-h]

Could be a status thing. I'm WP status and just got back last week from a trip to Spain. Booked the tickets with EK a fair while ago, but had no trouble at all at the time booking J rewards both ways for the +1 and I. I ended up booking into F on the way over just to experience that class. I was originally looking for the 280K reward RTW tickets, but ended up giving up on them because it was too hard to find OW flights when I wanted, and really didn't have enough time off work to make a RTW trip worthwhile. There was heaps of availability at the time on EK return to Madrid, so decided to just book return flights to Sydney - Madrid instead. Maybe the reward availability has tightened up since I did my bookings, it was probably 6 months ago

 

[am0985]

Could be a status thing. I'm WP status and just got back last week from a trip to Spain. Booked the tickets with EK a fair while ago, but had no trouble at all at the time booking J rewards both ways for the +1 and I. I ended up booking into F on the way over just to experience that class. I was originally looking for the 280K reward RTW tickets, but ended up giving up on them because it was too hard to find OW flights when I wanted, and really didn't have enough time off work to make a RTW trip worthwhile. There was heaps of availability at the time on EK return to Madrid, so decided to just book return flights to Sydney - Madrid instead. Maybe the reward availability has tightened up since I did my bookings, it was probably 6 months ago

As far as I know OW/Qantas status doesn't count for anything with Emirates bookings. Availability has tightened up a lot - definitely a lot more since then.

 

[cjd600]

I'm amazed that ppl still prefer to fly ex LHR or LGW and pay hundreds of dollars more in APD charges when they could fly ex Europe instead.

If you're referring tp my post #10 directly above yours, I was connecting from Europe thru London LHR/LGW-JFK. Difficult to fly ex Europe to USA with IB/AY unless you jump on them on release date and dont have married segment issues

 

[MrJetset]

Where in the World is Dohar?

 

[Franky]

Where in the World is Dohar?

Not sure, but I know where Doha is..

 

[MrJetset]

Disturbingly, I have noticed a massive decline in Now, Qatar and Emirates appear to have turned off their avails from their hubs in Dohar and Dubai to Australia … although there are plenty of avails from Spain to those hubs. A similar situation with Singapore and Kuala Lumpur with plenty of avails from Spain to those hubs but nothing ongoing to Australia.

I have also noticed some differences between award avails through the QFF website and what is showing to be available through BA, AAdvantage and Award Nexus. For example, through AAdvantage I could see QR redemptions from Dohar to Sydney but not available on QFF, plus yesterday I found QR flights from Barcelona to Singapore on the BA site and Award Nexus, but the same flights could not be seen on the QFF site.

^^^^

 

[ozbeachbabe]

If you're referring tp my post #10 directly above yours, I was connecting from Europe thru London LHR/LGW-JFK. Difficult to fly ex Europe to USA with IB/AY unless you jump on them on release date and dont have married segment issues

I wasn't referring to anyone specifically, it just seems like a lot of people when they think Europe seem to favour AU/LHR/AU instead of thinking outside the box and flying into LHR but out of another European city eg OSL, AMS, ZRH etc unaware that in some cases they could save themselves hundred of dollars in APD fees.

It's not always the case as sometimes LHR will have a lower base fare than Europe so even if you're slugged the APD fees the total may still be less flying ex LHR. Always compare prices for both.