I am not trying to win friends... and I was neither rude or ... the other thing. You could say I was sarcastic and cynical.
OK sure, that's all plausible.
EDIT: it does not, however, address my point that availability and pricing to LHR from Australia has changed DRASTICALLY and unfairly against 'ordinary' punters. And then you have:
"The strong performance in calendar 2023 meant Loyalty achieved its earnings target of $500 million per annum six months ahead of schedule."
https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/m...4-supports-continued-investment-in-customers/
"In the near term, however, Qantas has downgraded earnings for the division. The airline now expects the division to earn between $500 million and $525 million in the year to June 30"
The overhaul of the airline’s loyalty division is part of a plan to reset the relationships with travellers. Some investors worry that it will affect margins,
www.afr.com
Let me just unpack a few things here.
1) Availability on QANTAS (and it's preferred routes). This is where the bulk of people's frustrations are as Qantas currently has a huge fleet shortage and just lack of seats in the air. The 747s have since retired post covid, we've lost 6 a380s (2 permanently and 3-4 have been AWOL at any given time). that's just been replaced by 3 b787s so we've seen a big reduction in supply and routes.
We also lost Qatar as a partner and Cathay, BA, AA (soon Finair) are all holding back some seats (granted Qantas holds back too for their partners). There is one nice gain having China Airlines (through Taipei) though.
On top of that, therr were huge points banks being built from lack of ability to use points during covid and just money thrown around in general.
You could argue that Qantas should release more seats, but that is what they've done with CR+. It's not anywhere near as good or valuable as CR, but it's not necessarily terrible either. It converts points into cash at what I would call a fair rate. It's just not a glamourous or good rate which people hope for.
Following on from availability is actually, how the search engine works. If you look for SYD > LHR it will try to send you via Singapore first and foremost as that's QF's main trunk route. It will also try to do it as one journey.
However it will never show a journey like SYD - SIN (stop for a day or 2) then SIN - LHR. And you can replace SIN with KUL, HND, HKG, DXB etc. Right now on the day of release (and a few days around it) I can see for Jul 2025, JL SYD > HND then HND > LHR all in F (or J). They just may not be all on exactly one day. This is what we mean by needing to know the network.
2) The other thing I want to address is loyalty being bigger and bigger portion of the business is something that will happen to many airlines post covid.
Every airline had an eye opener to just how ridiculously profitable loyalty was during covid when airlines like Delta opened their books. They had to use their loyalty division as collateral for loans during covid so a lot more financial info became known.
Loyalty division for QF will also continue to increase it's presence over time here as well. This means more people with QFF points.
You could say this is not fair to the average punter, but ultimately QF is a business. As you get more engagement, to extract value you have to be ahead of the curve. This means either with knowledge and know how to beat the "average" punter.
If you want to learn, this is actually a very good resource to be able to have people help you figure out how to do it with routes as well as information drops as usually any news gets here fast (usually by the time its somewhere like FB or OzB the people here have already mass booked stuff).
Edit: I do want to also say. I do think there are still many faults with Qantas, the airline but I make a distinction between Qantas and utilising QFF points program.
