There's several posts here suggesting better treatment for LTG customers. It's eye opening, even depressing, to look at it from Qantas's perspective. To them, many of the "unloved" LTGs probably look like the archetype perfect customer...
You've committed many, many of your best years of flying with them, enough to accrue LTG. They've extracted additional margin, time and time again, year in, year out, as you've shunned BFOD to stay loyal to Qantas, based on a marketed proposition of future rewards flights. But you've rarely (never, perhaps?) been able to book them. And if you do, it'll only be on their terms. Unwanted dates, strange routings - they're all part of the game. J rewards on QF to Europe? Nope, we'll offer you UL or nothing.
You likely travelled a reasonable amount for work, probably on more flexible fares than you would typically purchase yourself for leisure. Whilst you might still have several years of leisure travel in front of you, it likely won't match the total number/value of work and leisure flights you took at the peak of your career. So your biggest spending and most profitable (to them) years are already behind you. Your Future Customer Lifetime Value is in rapid decline, so they now care less about you today than they did last year. And will continue to care less and less every year into the future.
Nevertheless, you typically remain in network for international and prioritise your domestic with them, since you've got these points that are otherwise worthless. So you're burning them upgrading a paid domestic economy fare to a higher class. But again, only on their terms, when they haven't sold the higher class as a revenue seat. In doing so, they're still extracting a reasonable amount of that diminishing Future Lifetime Value. The marginal cost to them of sending you to your domestic destination in an otherwise empty J seat, as opposed to a Y seat is little more than the cost of a cheap meal and an even cheaper glass of wine. And that's before considering the chance they get to sell that Y seat a second time round.
From their perspective, you've been an ideal customer. Lots of value extracted, at only a minimal marginal cost to do so. And who cares if you're now feeling disillusioned or unloved? Your best 'value extracting' days are now behind you. Someone else can deal with the 'second press' of your grape if you decide to move on. And why not? Like a perennially unfaithful spouse, they're already paying much more attention to the younger, more (financially) attractive version of you.
I don't say any of this to have go at anyone, rather to point out that Qantas Loyalty is fundamentally about generating loyalty TO Qantas and exploiting that for commercial benefit. It's not about fairness or rewarding customers who have been loyal to Qantas in the past, regardless of how the marketing is portrayed. They make a lot of money because not everyone gets a reasonable value exchange from that relationship. And the program redesign will be about the future value customers can generate, not what they've delivered to Qantas to date.
