Guide to AFF’s Annual Weekend Member Gathering

AFF winery tour in Launceston
AFF members enjoyed a winery tour at last year’s gathering in Launceston.

For the past 18 years, Australian Frequent Flyer (AFF) has held an annual weekend member gathering somewhere in Australia.

This year’s AFF member gathering will be held in Melbourne from 21-23 November!

What to expect at an AFF weekend gathering

AFF social events are a perfect opportunity to meet other frequent flyers and put faces to names, including AFF moderators, staff and other members. These “offline” gatherings are also a great place to share travel tales and learn new tricks, including some of the ones that are just too good to publish on an online forum.

Our members are a friendly bunch and always welcoming to new members. So even if you haven’t been to an AFF gathering before, you’re bound to meet some interesting people and enjoy the weekend away!

Most attendees fly into the host city on Friday and then depart on Sunday. There’s typically an informal dinner on Friday night, optional activities during the day on Saturday, and the main event is dinner on Saturday night. This dinner often includes guest speakers and prizes.

Many of our members also bump into each other in either the Qantas or Virgin Australia lounges when flying out on Sunday afternoon. (If you don’t already have lounge access, there’s a good chance another AFF member will be able to guest you in 🙂 )

AFF Launceston gathering dinner on Saturday night
AFF moderator “QF WP” speaks at the Saturday night dinner at the 2023 gathering in Launceston.

You can read about some of our previous gatherings here:

Schedule for the 2025 Melbourne gathering

This year, Friday night’s dinner will be held at Emerald Peacock and the Saturday night event will be at Hyatt Centric Hotel. There are also three Saturday activities to choose from:

  • Option 1: Melbourne Sights Walking Tour, a 2.5-hour walking tour through the Melbourne CBD with a professional tour guide, followed by an optional lunch
  • Option 2: Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) Tour & Australian Sports Museum
  • Option 3: Yum Cha lunch in Melbourne’s Chinatown precinct

You can find full details including estimated costs in this AFF post.

AFF winery tour in Launceston
One of the stops at last year’s AFF winery tour in Launceston.

Who can attend?

AFF events are open to all AFF members, as well as partners and +1s.

Our members often use the terms Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum to describe their attendance. For those unfamiliar with the AFF lingo:

  • “Platinum” means you’re planning to attend and have booked flights/accommodation
  • “Gold” means you’re likely to attend but will need to confirm at a later time
  • “Silver” means you’re unlikely to attend at this stage
  • “Bronze” means you’re unable to attend.

Registration and payment

To register for the upcoming Brisbane gathering, please complete the event registration form here. Please also post in the AFF thread to let other AFF members know you’ll be attending, and feel free to share your flight and hotel details in the thread as well.

Thank you very much to those who have already registered!

Closer to the event, registered attendees will receive either an email or a personal message on AFF with confirmation of the dinners/activities they will attend and payment instructions.

Members are responsible for paying for their own meals and activities. There’s also a $5 registration fee per person to attend our weekend gatherings, which covers the cost of administrative overheads, name tags, and so on.

Follow all the action on the AFF forum

For more details about the upcoming gathering, see the dedicated AFF thread:

Can’t attend our next gathering?

If you can’t make it to Melbourne from 21-23 November 2025, no worries! We have lots of other events throughout the year. Our members are also welcome to organise their own events and promote them on our Meetings & Social Events forum.

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to more than 100 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
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