Rex Flyer points are now frozen after Rex Airlines entered voluntary administration. Rex Flyer members are not currently able to redeem points during the administration period.
“In the event of a successful restructure of the business accrued points may become available again. Further information will be provided in due course,” a notice on the Rex website said.
At this stage, it’s too early to knew whether Rex Flyer members will eventually be able to use any of the existing points they’ve accrued. However, the administrators have advised that members can continue to earn points and use their status tier benefits when flying on Rex’s Saab 340 regional network, which continues to operate.
This is obviously concerning news for frequent flyers with Rex. The silver lining is that the launch of Rex Flyer was delayed for so long that it’s only been running for less than a year. It launched in October 2023 and the only way to earn points was by flying on Rex. (For a while, new members also received 5,000 bonus points for free when signing up.)
So, it’s unlikely that a large number of Australians will stand to lose huge balances of Rex Flyer points – as was the case, for example, when Ansett went bankrupt in 2001.
About Rex Flyer
Until the end of July, Rex Flyer members could burn their points for reward seats and upgrades on Rex flights. Although the program had no other partner airlines, a unique feature was that Rex would make all unsold seats on its own flights available to book at the lowest “Ultimate” points level on the day of departure.
Rex Flyer also offers three status tiers – Sapphire, Emerald and Diamond.
What happened when Virgin Australia went into administration?
Although it’s a different loyalty program, it could be useful to consider what happened to Velocity points when Virgin Australia was in voluntary administration.
When Virgin Australia collapsed into voluntary administration in April 2020, it temporarily suspended the ability to redeem Velocity points. This followed a “run” on points in the weeks leading up to that point. However, that was only for a short time and Velocity members could still continue to earn points throughout.
Although it’s Virgin Australia’s loyalty program, Velocity Frequent Flyer is a separate business and was itself never in administration. Having learned from the history of Ansett, the founders of Velocity Frequent Flyer also set up that program with a trust backing the cash value of members’ accrued points.
As far as we can tell, Rex Flyer is not one of the Rex Group companies that went into voluntary administration yesterday.
Could Rex partner with Velocity?
The frequent flyer program is one of many things that administrators will examine as they work to keep Rex’s regional operations viable.
As an alternative to retaining the Rex Flyer program, one option administrators are considering is for Rex to partner with Velocity Frequent Flyer.
Virgin Australia has already stepped in to offer replacement flights to Rex customers at no cost. It will also take over the leases of three of Rex’s Boeing 737s.
“Rex and Virgin Australia are also exploring opportunities to support regional customers, which include Virgin Australia selling Rex’s regional services through codeshare or interline arrangements, and making Velocity Frequent Flyer benefits available to Rex’s regional customers,” the administrators said in a statement.
Virgin Australia already partners with Link Airways and FlyPelican to offer various Velocity Frequent Flyer benefits to customers of those regional Australian airlines.
