Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce and Qantas Loyalty CEO Olivia Wirth have announced sweeping changes to the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme that will provide its current 10+ million members with a mixture of good and bad news, but definitely skewed towards the good. These changes are to be rolled out over the next 12 months.

Point Hacks will provide a comprehensive review of all the changes, along with our take over the coming weeks, so stay tuned! But for now, a summary of the changes are listed below.

Details of the changes

The good

• Adding more than 1 million extra reward seats available annually on Qantas as well as on new partner airlines, which include Bangkok Airways, China Airlines, Air France and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
• The new ability to redeem your Qantas Points on domestic Air New Zealand flights—which is available as of now. This opens up almost the entire domestic network, given members can already redeem with Jetstar.

Expect to see more Business Class availability like this

• Slashing carrier charges by as much as 50% on international bookings (excluding direct flights to and from Australia and New Zealand, and select South Pacific destinations). This is estimated to save members around $200 per return flight. All travel classes will see a reduction
• A reduction in the number of points required on domestic and international Economy Classic Rewards
• Creating a new tiered Points Club programme to better reward members who are more frequent buyers than frequent flyers and earn most of their points from on-the-ground transactions. This will be launched in late 2019

The bad

• An up to 15% increase on points for premium cabins on domestic and international Classic Flight Reward seats and up to 9% increase on the points for upgrades. This includes partner airline and oneworld Classic Flight Reward seats
• Round-the-world award pricing will also increase for premium cabins at the rate of 19% for Premium Economy, 14% for Business (the most common redemption) and 8% in First; more specifically, Business will increase from 280,000 to 318,000 points; Economy Class round-the-world awards have dropped immediately in price by 6% to 132,400 points (from 140,000)

The indifferent

Introduction of a Lifetime Platinum status, which will require 75,000 Status Credits to achieve, which will be launched in September 2019. While this is a good change for the very few members who will achieve this, this goal is well out of reach for most members

What’s not changing

Qantas wanted to reiterate that some of the more popular aspects of the programme will not be changing, such as:

• The status tiers of Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Platinum One will remain as is
• The number of Status Credits required to achieve these levels will stay the same
• The number of points and Status Credits earned with Qantas and its partner airlines will also stay the same

Reaction from American Express

Emily Roberts, Vice President of Consumer Acquisition, Loyalty, and Partnerships for American Express Australia and New Zealand, a longstanding partner of Qantas, commented:

As one of American Express’ long standing strategic partners, Qantas has time and time again demonstrated its commitment to providing value to our mutual customers. We believe the changes to the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme will be welcomed by our Qantas American Express card and Platinum card members who will benefit from the increase in Qantas reward seat availability and enjoy greater benefits and savings on their next holiday or business trip.

Summing up

It is great to see Qantas making a genuine effort to address the major concerns of its membership base, especially the long-held bugbear of many members, being availability of reward seats.

We would expect these changes to get a positive reception. Even the negative announcement of an increased points requirement for upgrades and Classic Reward seats comes tied with a promise of increased availability. Hopefully we will start seeing some opening up of award seats soon.