Qantas announced in June’s Qantas Frequent Flyer changes that it will introduce a lifetime Platinum status tier. This is sure to pique the interest of many frequent flyers. Unfortunately, the bar has been set so high that it’s not worth aiming for.
To earn lifetime Qantas Platinum status, you would need to achieve a lifetime total of 75,000 Qantas status credits.
Currently, lifetime Qantas Frequent Flyer Silver status is earned upon reaching 7,000 lifetime status credits. And lifetime Gold status requires 14,000 status credits to achieve. So the ask of 75,000 status credits – more than five times the threshold for lifetime Gold – is a quantum leap.
To earn Qantas Platinum status, you would normally need to earn 1,400 status credits in a single membership year. Once earned, Platinum status requires 1,200 annual status credits to renew. This means that it could take 62 consecutive years of holding Qantas Platinum status before you would reach lifetime Platinum.
AFF member juddles has done some calculations and estimates that you would need to spend around $1.5 million on flights over a long period of time to achieve lifetime Qantas Platinum status. That’s the equivalent of 209 return trips from Sydney to Los Angeles in Business class, or 3,750 return trips from Sydney to Melbourne on red e-Deal Economy tickets. juddles draws the following conclusion…
Running these numbers was an exercise I initially did just for fun. But it is spooky how all these travel patterns have resulted in a total spend of about $1,500,000
And who on Earth in these scenarios would still be flying after that that needed to actually utilize a level that just gives them vanilla WP??
In a separate thread, AFF members have discussed how long it would take them to earn lifetime Qantas Platinum status. Many of the commenters are very frequent flyers, yet most of them will not live long enough to ever earn lifetime Platinum…
I am just over 50,000 short so if I live until I am 150 I can get there.
It has taken me 21 years to reach 31K LTSC’s, so at the same rate I will make it roughly round about 2050. At which time I earnestly hope I am no longer still in this life…
Let’s just say that they’ll be wheeling me onto the plane for the first flight after I hit LTP – in a box
Based on my travel so far this year, around 2169
It’s estimated that the number of people who will qualify for lifetime Platinum status are in the hundreds. Qantas Frequent Flyer has nearly 13 million members, so that represents less than 0.01% of members.
With the introduction of Qantas’ Points Club later in the year, it’s possible that not all of those status credits would need to come from flying in the future. But it will still require an enormous amount of spend with Qantas.
Anyone that wishes to earn lifetime Qantas Platinum status would be far better off aiming for lifetime Gold status with the British Airways Executive Club program. British Airways Gold status is equivalent to Qantas Platinum, or Oneworld Emerald. With British Airways, you would need to earn only 35,000 tier points to earn lifetime Gold status. What’s more, British Airways doesn’t punish its frequent flyers with reduced earn rates when flying on Oneworld partner airlines.
Anyone with less than 40,000 status credits is literally better off STOPPING with Qantas, and crediting ALL their flights to BAEC [British Airways Executive Club]. You can earn 35,000 TP with BA (which earns lifetime Oneworld Emerald) faster by starting from ZERO, than it is starting from 40,000 status credits with QF in order to attain lifetime Oneworld Emerald.
AFF members have been asking for lifetime Platinum status for years. On one hand, Qantas has delivered this. At the same time, they’ve delivered a slap in the face to frequent flyers by making the threshold so obscenely high.
If Qantas wanted to deliver something that it knows barely any of its members will ever achieve – and perhaps that was precisely the point – it has achieved that.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: LTP – the reality
For more, check out the in-depth discussion about Qantas’ lifetime Platinum tier, as well as the other recent changes to the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, in episode 14 of the “AFF on Air” podcast.
