Qantas rolls out Classic Plus Flight Rewards

[TheRealTMA]

With a title of QANTAS LOYALTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE I tend to agree.

The Curious Mail rewrite copy of the puff press release has the byline of Tansy Harcourt.

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[flyguy77]

this article just smacks of insincerity and does nothing more than make us question their integrity.

Pointhacks has been horrible for years now and getting worse.

It's nothing more than an affiliate marketing site masquerading as advice and recently it's been more & more paid advertisements & 'reviews'.

It doesn't surprise me one bit to see them as a Qantas PR mouthpiece also.
It's a shame AFF couldn't remain independent.

 

[WilsonM]

Thank you for these excerpts.

This is amazing because it now allows us to interrogate what 'this journalist' thinks is 'decently priced'.

The cash fare was $13,809. The taxes and fees on a Classic Plus SYD-LHR business class return flight are $652 + $1,127.

At 1.5c/pt, that means this 'decently priced' fare was 802,000 points lol.

Also, you have to absolutely love the passage at the end: Classic Plus bookings are up three-fold ... on expectations lmao.

Describing this as anything other than a press release for Qantas would be an embarrassment.

This is being generous as well - there's every chance it was on the CDG/FCO flights with much lower taxes lol.

For a very not-scientific breakdown, I sure am glad that the equivalent of ~9 premium CC signups (plus the spend you need), with a ~400 fee each time, is worth that J flight. To break down the maths further, you're spending ~3.6k on annual fees to get to 800k points (assuming you're churning), and then spending almost $2k on top in taxes. Or you could literally save yourself the hassle and buy a decently priced J fare not on Qantas for ~$7k.

I liked the bit of "a quarter of members hadn't redeemed a flight for 5 years before spending on C+" - yeah, it could fit their narrative of people are excited about C+. Or more likely, they just got so fed up with the complete lack of ability to find flights as CRs that they finally reached the point of no return.

Such a BS claim of 4x more availability though - I don't really know how you can claim it's a case of availability when all it takes is D/I Class availability in J. I assume that's going off the 20 mil C+ vs 5 mil CR, but we already know that this is completely different as CR takes into account partner availability.

But the sentiment of this really worries me - This seems like a glowing endorsement of C+ from an accounting point of view, so QF will want it out more and more - including on partner airlines. How long until JQ is introduced, then partners like AA, EK...

And as a general note, I'd like to think that the content produced on AFF is different from PH. Maybe I'm wrong. But AFF and Point Hacks have no coordination on editorial policy or content - they're run separately in that regard.

 

[Doctore1003]

More bizarreness in The Australian, this time from their regular aviation reporter:
“Global public opinion and data company YouGov revealed this week that Qantas had topped the “biggest brand movers list” with gains in six metrics including general impression, corporate reputation, customer satisfaction, recommendation, quality and consideration.

The company attributed Qantas’ rise up the ranks to its recent frequent flyer program overhaul, with the changes due to kick in mid-year.”

Um what?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/virgin-scores-wins-over-qantas-for-reliability-and-biggest-domestic-market-share/news-story/2bd821db8b780291743a5dba8272f765