Lounges - sizes and services - have nothing to do with QFF so... yeah
I actually don't mind the idea
@Dane Charles postulated above - ie to pay for better access to reward seats (which, let's face it, is essetially what one does by attaining status). I'm not suggesting to bring a no status member up to the levels of P1 for reward access or anything, but that's an idea that the bean counters probably would like - increased revenue for them for the CHANCE of better access to reward seats. Of course, it then devalues, a bit, the status benefit of say a Gold member if they're competing against the "paid access" tier but ANY scheme to provide for more seat access to lower or no status flyers will have that effect - and QF won't want to be seen to be providing less incentive to attaining status - and that's where this idea probably hits a roadblock.
I would say the way around that is to provide for the two tiers of rewards - as many other airlines offer a "standard" reward, at say 2x the point cost, and a "saver" at the current redemption cost - with a reasonably higher amount of availability. That gives some choice to the points rich folks and churners. The pricing needs to be reasonable though (ie not like the current "points plus pay" levels that many people confuse with CR's).
Points expiry - or nixing it (as UA recently went back to - they've flirted with that in the past and had a few back and forwards iirc) - I think will only exacerbate the issue of continual points accrual - but still hard to burn on the things most people want (ie: not toasters). Not to mention adds liability to the books for the airline (but not our problem as customers of course). I'm honestly not sure how this would help except to stop the barely engaged "frequent" flyers who havd had points expire after 18 months of zero activity then cry foul because they wanted to use their 13k points on a "free" ticket to Gold Coast. We've all seen those stories about how "loyal" they were and lost out. So that would be great for those folks, but probably won't make much difference to those who are engaged enough to have even small amounts of activity via a yearly trip somewhere or even just linking Woolies Rewards, BP or having an earning CC. I mean it's really not hard to keep a QFF account active (even QF wellbeing!) so the net result is probably not going to be a huge change overall for most punters imo. Sounds good but.
I reckon the big takeaway from this thread is the issue of LTP. The level is so out of whack with the rest of the program it is wishful thinking for the vast majority of long term "loyal" flyers that it isn't even aspirational to attain.
Of course the other one is "more" availability, but everyone wants that so that's not really "news" imo.
