Hanging out for a bonus status credits offer from Qantas Frequent Flyer? You may be able to “trick” Qantas into sending you one.
Qantas has not released a public “double status credits” promotion since February 2019. Instead, as Australian Frequent Flyer has covered previously, Qantas is now sending personalised offers to individual members. These typically offer 50% bonus status credits on Qantas-operated flights for travel in the next 4 months, and you usually have a week to book from the date of receiving the offer.
Our members have noticed that these Qantas bonus status credit offers are often targeted at customers that have recently been searching for flights on the Qantas website – but didn’t make a booking. (From the perspective of a frequent flyer program, it makes perfect sense to target this kind of behaviour.)
With this knowledge, AFF member sbor90 conducted an experiment to see if they could intentionally trigger a bonus status credits offer to be sent. And they succeeded. sbor90 writes:
Late last year, I unintentionally triggered an offer while signed into my partner’s account and it got me thinking about whether I could intentionally trigger one the next time I need to book a decent QF itinerary. I have a ~360SC booking to make for mid Feb travel, and while making this booking will probably ensure a public DSC comes along in Feb (you’re welcome!) I can’t wait that long to book. So I logged in and started searching on the QF website. My [crude] strategy was to replicate the actions which triggered the offer for my partner…
Over the past week I’ve logged in on three different days to make the same search, albeit with slightly different dates each time. Yesterday was the 3rd attempt, and just as I was starting to think my theory wasn’t going to work, I woke up to find [an email from Qantas].
I have no idea whether it made a difference but before attempting the searches I browsed to Air NZ’s partner page and clicked their “Visit the Qantas website” link (scroll down) so the QF big data magical machine could glean from the HTTP referrer header that I’d been on one of their competitor’s websites.
We still don’t know exactly what algorithm Qantas uses to decide who receives a bonus status credits offer. But it seems that there is a pattern to it, as many other AFF members have reported also receiving an offer within a few days after searching for flights on the Qantas website – but not booking.
I was doing some searches for a friend to USA, and this triggered an offer for me for 50% SCs this week.
Got a 50% offer just over a week ago that was targeted for travel to Europe. Gave 1 week to make bookings and was valid for flights until mid-May. I had been searching Europe flights but unfortunately my upcoming trip is in June…
To contribute to the list, I searched Canberra to Adelaide last November for flights in November and December and I got a targeted DSC offer exactly same terms as you indicated.
The subject of the email sent by Qantas Frequent Flyer typically includes the name of the city that the customer had been searching for flights to. (For example, the email might say “Fly to Christchurch, earn 50% more Status Credits”.) Therefore, receiving the offer is very unlikely to be a coincidence.
It seems these offers are only being sent if you’re searching for flights to certain destinations operated by Qantas. Searching for flights to Bali or a destination not served by Qantas, for example, is unlikely to trigger an offer. But searching for flights to Auckland, Christchurch, Nadi, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, London or even Adelaide seems to do the trick – and you don’t necessarily have to fly to any of these places to take advantage of the 50% bonus status credits.
This strategy won’t necessarily work all the time, nor for everyone. Some AFF members say they’ve tried doing this and never received an offer.
I think there is more to it. I have been trying this for many weeks now on a set route with no offer. In vain sadly. Maybe it also depends on year expiry date. Plus a whole lot of other stuff.
But if you want to book some Qantas flights, and a bonus status credits offer would help you to attain or retain Qantas Frequent Flyer status, it could be worth trying.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Intentionally triggering a targeted 50% bonus SC promo
