Qantas has announced several upcoming changes to its Frequent Flyer loyalty program. Although there are some silver linings like lower award pricing on short haul flights and more options for booking premium partner awards, the cloud is that the majority of flights will cost up to 20% more.
You can find the full announcement here. Here’s a quick summary of the upcoming changes:
Increased award pricing
The biggest news from all these changes is that the majority of award flights will be increasing in cost by up to 20%. The lowest award pricing currently starts at 8,000 points and that’ll increase to 9,200 points – a 15% increase. The other changes are still to be confirmed, but it sounds like Qantas will be sticking to an award chart model rather than bringing in dynamic pricing like many other airlines.
Increased carrier charges
It’s not only the award pricing that’ll be increasing, but the carrier charges too when booking Business and First class awards on Qantas flights. We don’t know yet if those fee increases will be substantial, but the airline has stated that they’ll share those details by May 5, 2025.
Reduced award pricing on short haul domestic flights
Although the number of Qantas points you have to redeem will increase on most award flights, the redemption requirement for short haul economy flights will be reducing from 6,400 to 5,700 points. That only applies to flights in Australia and New Zealand and not, say, short haul flights in the US operated by American Airlines.
More options for booking premium partner awards
Qantas has stated that they’ll be making up to 1 million more international award seats available through partner awards. This will be through adding the ability to book Hawaiian Airlines flights, and through adding the ability to book Premium Economy seats on Air France, KLM, Iberia and Finnair.
Jetstar upgrade availability
Qantas Frequent Flyer program members will be able to redeem Qantas points to upgrade to Business class on Jetstar flights.
Higher point earnings
Program members will earn up to 25% more points on domestic flights operated by Qantas.
Both increased & decreased pricing on Emirates awards
If you want to book economy award flights on Emirates with Qantas points, the good news is that pricing will decrease. Unfortunately pricing will increase for Business and First class Emirates awards.
Quick Thoughts
Although there are some upcoming improvements such as reduced award pricing on short haul routes in Australia and New Zealand, the biggest news here is that award pricing will be increasing on all other routes by up to 20%. That’s obviously bad news and will be particularly galling for our Antipodean friends who’ll be much more invested in Qantas’ loyalty program than most Americans will be.
Having said that, I have to commend Qantas here for both their timeline and transparency. Unlike so many other airlines *cough*Virgin Atlantic*cough*British Airways*cough*Qatar Airways*cough*Air France/KLM Flying Blue*cough*, Qantas hasn’t instituted an overnight devaluation of award flights. Instead, these changes won’t be implemented until August 5, 2025 which means you have more than six months to lock in flights at the current lower award pricing.
The full details of the price increases haven’t been disclosed yet, but Qantas has committed to providing full award charts listing the new pricing by May 5, 2025. That’s three months before the changes will come into play.
As for transparency, the email that Qantas sent out laid out these changes clearly. They didn’t obfuscate the bad news and phrased everything in a way that a regular member of their Frequent Flyer program should be able to easily digest. There was no claiming that the increased award pricing was in response to customer requests, plus the email actively highlighted that members can lock in the lower award pricing for flights through June 2026 by booking before August 5. Seeing as devaluations over time are inevitable, in my opinion Qantas has given a masterclass in how airlines should institute and communicate changes such as these. It doesn’t necessarily make the changes more palatable, but it doesn’t leave the same bad taste in the mouth that other airlines have. I therefore now have far more trust in Qantas than I do many other airline award programs.
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Credit where credit is due, but…you seem to be blithely naive (or not entirely honest) about airline program promises, swallowing and blindly repeating whole nonsense that’s so often promised and so rarely delivered in reality.
You really need to edit your headline, changing from “increased award availability” to “PROMISES OF increased award availability which are yet to be seen.” Until/unless anyone has actually seen actual, MEANINGFUL increases in award availability, then it’s just maketspeak spin and lies, aka the usual “exciting enhancements.”
We live increasingly in the Age Of Lies. Don’t contribute to that.
My main issues are regarding the biggest theoretical advantage in these changes: more award availability. There’s no promise of more Qantas award space for the new higher prices and there’s no indication of more business or first class award space that will be accessible, just coach and PE. That’s no big win for passengers.
Also the award space with partners could theoretically be reduced because Qantas doesn’t actually control these.What happens when Hawaiian gets more integrated into Alaska and the widebody planes are running completely different routes? An economy seat from Seattle to Bangkok or wherever is unlikely to appeal to Qantas members. I’d like to know more about why other airlines would suddenly become more generous with their award space to Qantas.
I don’t read the announcement as suggesting that any airline is going to offer more award seats on their flights. Instead, it means that Qantas is increasing how many seats can potentially be booked on partner airlines with Qantas points. Since they will allow people to use points to book premium economy on a number of airlines (which wasn’t the case before), they can claim that there will be more awards available. Same thing with Hawaiian: if you can later book any seats on Hawaiian with Qantas then that’s more than you can do today.
Instead of saying that more award seats would become available, I think they should have said that there will be more ways to use points on partner airlines. That would be more accurate
Nasty cough you have there. . .
Thats pretty funny since their awards tend to be outragoues at normal levels, at least for trips on their metal.
Will be spending a month in Australia in the fall. Have been scoping out flight inventory within country for months. Plan on buying the flights within the next week or 2 with transferred Citi points to Qantas but when all is said and done will probably have a few Qantas points left over. Now I can just use them for future flights on partner metal.
As always, thanks for the lucid summation of an airline’s devaluation plans. It’s given me an increased ability to plan and pivot.