Qantas Frequent Flyer changes coming in early 2024

[levelnine]

What's the strategy here? Book rewards for beyond the changes and cancel/rebook if truely positive options become available next year??

My suggestion would be to start banking points as quickly as is humanly possible.

If Qantas moves to dynamic pricing or some tiered reward structure, they are going to throw out a lot of low rate redemptions (quite possibly lower than current prices) to soften the blow. My guess is that there's going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to fly on premium routes for bargain prices. Once the good news cycle is over, they will hike prices and the window will be shut.

 

[dairyfloss]

Another bold prediction: QFF moves to Avios currency the same way Qatar and FinnAir did. Soon all OneWorld airlines will use Avios as the currency for travel alliance wide

If you can't beat them, join them!

As wild as it might seem, if the alliance-wide upgrade model that oneworld has been talking about for 5 years were ever to come to fruition, then it would require something like this to occur. Maybe not all under one currency, but the currencies need to have a common value. Star Alliance does it reasonably well. It might also mean the end of lottery based upgrades for international; or at least in part.

Cheers,
Matt.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

No doubt "enhancements" to make it "simpler and fairer"!

Simpler and fairer for whom?

 

[aikman]

My suggestion would be to start banking points as quickly as is humanly possible.

I was thinking the opposite. Use as much points as you can now before the devaluation. Even just the announcement of the devaluation will result in the good redemptions disappearing quickly.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

As wild as it might seem, if the alliance-wide upgrade model that oneworld has been talking about for 5 years were ever to come to fruition, then it would require something like this to occur. Maybe not all under one currency, but the currencies need to have a common value. Star Alliance does it reasonably well. It might also mean the end of lottery based upgrades for international; or at least in part.

I wouldn’t hold up star Alliance Upgrades awards as a good example of Alliance wide upgrades. For one thing you need to travel in the highest fare class of a cabin to even qualify to request an upgrade then you need to manually call the FFP to request the upgrade which must then request the upgrade from the partner. Often upgrades won’t close until check in.

 

[SheikYerbouti]

Improvements for shareholders could very well mean “ways of extracting more from our customers whilst providing them less”.

"Could"?

Isn't that how *every* business works?

 

[levelnine]

I was thinking the opposite. Use as much points as you can now before the devaluation. Even just the announcement of the devaluation will result in the good redemptions disappearing quickly.

Any good redemptions are already gone — availability is rare as hen's teeth at the moment.

I think there's less than a 10% chance it'll be a straight devaluation. Qantas is in a reputation rebuilding phase. They're going to offer something sweet before they whack customers with a devaluation.

It's a gamble to accumulate points at the moment, but I think it's a gamble worth taking. If you had no points banked, you would have missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime — wide open Qantas availability to/from Europe for northern hemisphere summer 2024. This is the time to have Qantas points — when they are handing out apology gifts. Once the scandal has passed, you'll want to dump Qantas as a program because they're almost certainly going to trash it from the perspective of a savvy points collector.

 

[mviy]

I had plenty of points. Saw the email a few hours after the email was sent and went to look for seats and the availability of J/F to/from LHR was already gone even for WP. I was willing to be flexible with dates, but couldn’t find the seats. I think maybe one direction to SYD on only one day was available, but I’m in MEL and would need both directions to make it work.

So for me and many others that missed out it didn’t leave a good feeling.

It’s one thing to release seats unexpectedly, but if all the availability goes too quickly it doesn’t solve the problem of insufficient seats. I have enough points for multiple return trips. I just need the availability to be able to book.

 

[levelnine]

I had plenty of points. Saw the email a few hours after the email was sent and went to look for seats and the availability of J/F to/from LHR was already gone even for WP. I was willing to be flexible with dates, but couldn’t find the seats. I think maybe one direction to SYD on only one day was available, but I’m in MEL and would need both directions to make it work.

Yep, you have to be quick. You are literally in an arms race with hundreds of thousands of other people sitting on almost 200 billion points. I got a tonne of redemptions to/from both North America and Europe. Was incredible.

 

[mviy]

I don’t spend all day checking my personal email. If I did I would get nothing done. So I might not have noticed till the evening.

As it is I am still looking to get LTG and don’t have Points Club so I don’t mind too much missing out on classic reward seats but if classic reward seats availability doesn’t improve or other key frequent flyer benefits then once I have LTG I’ll have every incentive to look elsewhere for international travel.

 

[levelnine]

As it is I am still looking to get LTG and don’t have Points Club so I don’t mind too much missing out on classic reward seats but if classic reward seats availability doesn’t improve or other key frequent flyer benefits then once I have LTG I’ll have every incentive to look elsewhere for international travel.

While each person needs to decide which strategy works best for them, I'd say it is very, very likely that, once the initial sweetener fades away next year, awards are going to get a lot worse on Qantas. Holding onto points beyond early 2024 is going to be a major losing proposition.

I have so much to say about how bad it is to chase LTG (it actually locks you further into Qantas for international award travel unless you are happy flying long haul Y), but that's a topic for another thread.

 

[am0985]

Points in J to Europe on QFF are already significantly higher than most other airlines especially if travelling on a partner airline. That combined with poor availability on QF metal in particular (but more recently across OW in general) makes them an unattractive proposition, though the recent award seat release was a gift.

Of course this needs to be weighed against how ubiquitous QFF points are here compared to other countries - how easy is it to get scores of KF miles in Singapore or Asia miles in HK? I don't know the answer to that one. Worth bearing in mind for any potential devaluation.

Generally most chat about QFF is not positive and there's been lots of publicity about people struggling to get award seats. Also QFF makes Qantas a lot of money and I'm not sure they'll want to kill the goose that lays that particular golden egg. Subsequent devaluations after these changes are inevitable, I guess the manner and severity is still an open question.

One thing they'll probably fix is the search function. Personally I don't mind it as once you know it's best to use the multi city tool and to ignore the points plus pay option it's easy enough. But it's an easy win for them especially given the widespread points plus pay confusion, if anything selfishly I hope they don't fix it as it puts some less experienced users off and probably somewhat reduces competition.

Anyway a much bigger problem that QF can't really fix is the much poorer availability of partner awards compared to pre pandemic together with other stuff like EK's insane fees. I didn't mind not being able to redeem on QF metal when I had all the other airlines to choose from.

 

[djtech]

Just saw Finnair introduce a minimum rewards seat guarantee. Seems like something Qantas could do super quickly and easily to build up goodwill and soften the cries about lack of redemptions! They could even restrict it to Gold FF or higher or similar to make it more 'exclusive' and give another perk for loyalty. It is just plain discouraging when they don't even try to make one seat available in a premium cabin when the calendar opens. Offering 2 seats in J, 4 in Prem Y and then 8 in Y for example surely won't hit their bottom lines too much when you consider that they will eventually release that many seats over the course of the flight being available for sale anyway! It's just about the predictability of seats that gives the impression that opportunities are there and increase the transparency of the program. For my friends and family, they are always complaining about how their points are 'worthless' because they only search a particular day and give up when they see the gazillion points price tag.

It will probably be some "good" enhancements in 2024. Easy wins like reducing carrier surcharge by 10% or reducing the change/cancellation fees, getting a few more points planes happening etc.

Looking longer term though, a devaluation has got to be in the works. 4 years is too long to keep redemption rates the same. I'm thinking 2025 would be when they start adding "tiers" and revamping the points + pay system. Virgin seems to have handled the soft devaluation well with the three tiered system. It makes sense when you think about closing the points delta between the cabins. Maybe something like a Saver and an Advantage rate like SQ has (and then platinum requests for seat openings can only be redeemed at the more expensive rate a la BAEC Gold).

 

[am0985]

If they make positive changes to Points Club and particularly PC Plus that'll be interesting too. Very hard to get PC Plus unless you're either flying an awful lot (in which case you'll likely be minimum Gold) or if you're getting a lot of money on credit cards. So any positive changes to this likely means they're leaning more into people earning points on the ground.

 

[Danger]

I don't see the need for a new thread on this topic when one already exists.

CEO retiring, what changes at Qantas would you like to see

Ive been tricked by that before so I do not go to gate How do you know when it is or its not a trick? Its most frustrating when it is a trick

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

 

[AIRwin]

I don't see the need for a new thread on this topic when one already exists.

CEO retiring, what changes at Qantas would you like to see

Ive been tricked by that before so I do not go to gate How do you know when it is or its not a trick? Its most frustrating when it is a trick

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

But this is specifically on Qantas Frequent Flyer

 

[exceladdict]

Oh, poor thing, QF is running low on funds. Got a new WP welcome pack today and they can afford to send only one bag tag these days. I wonder if they would accept crowdfunding???

View attachment 352508

Mine didn't even arrive, and then when I requested one it was old logo! At least yours has the new red roo.

I'd like to see the massive points hauls for credit card churning removed.

Anything with "a pulse and a payslip" (including Uni students working 5mins/week) can rack up insane numbers of points, completely warping the system.

If QF could be trusted to implement a hybrid system, then one in which there were:
* some guaranteed (non Y) seats for the plats at first release
* some guaranteed (non Y) seats for the plebs a bit later
* last-minute releases with more dynamic pricing (given the above two points)
* the occasional "we're going CRAZY!!!'" mass seat dumps for PR
* no DYKWIA seat releases! (or at least, if there are plenty available, for each one handed to a plat, have a waitlist of plebs to allocate a matching seat to whoever's at the top of the list - for goodwill!)

The loss of releases would be a massive WP loss. But I feel like there's little chance of putting this online as it makes them too easy to access.

Remember Doug Parker has an involvement here. Now sure, he's not running Loyalty, but probably would have some influence on direction... in terms of AAesque changes.

I can definitely see both dynamic pricing coming in for rewards, and also more revenue based earnings for QFF. This wouldn't shock at all.

Dynamic earning gives the airline a fixed cost amount they can expect to incur based on a % of the fare - but "simpler and fairer" actually gives Qantas this already eg. 800 points minimum = whatever cost per point, which can be built into the fare. I don't know how qf in air earn compares to other programs, but I don't feel like it's worth the pain for them to do it on this side of the program. The airline itself is profitable, ATM anyway. @pauly7 might be able to comment on relativiyies.

Another bold prediction: QFF moves to Avios currency the same way Qatar and FinnAir did. Soon all OneWorld airlines will use Avios as the currency for travel alliance wide

No chance, QF would want absolute control of the currency given how much it earns them. Maybe if IAG hoovered up shares, but that's unlikely.

If they make positive changes to Points Club and particularly PC Plus that'll be interesting too. Very hard to get PC Plus unless you're either flying an awful lot (in which case you'll likely be minimum Gold) or if you're getting a lot of money on credit cards. So any positive changes to this likely means they're leaning more into people earning points on the ground.

I think changes to PC are likely after the focus groups on the topic.

 

[RichardMEL]

I actually wouldn't mind moving to avios but ONLY if it meant better opportunities with fellow avios using carriers (hello QR?? LOL).

I do suspect that anything like that would be linked to move to a revenue based model which would make some sort of sense (for QFF).

 

[Lynda2475]

Very hard to get PC Plus unless you're either flying an awful lot

Flying a lot does not help with PC nor PC+ since the points contribution from flying is limited to a piddly 20k.

 

[mviy]

Flying a lot does not help with PC nor PC+ since the points contribution from flying is limited to a piddly 20k.

Well if you put it on a credit card you may get extra points on the credit card for QF spend, and if you time it right you can use flight bookings to achieve the required spend for a credit card sign up bonus, but there are other things you can spend on, of course.