AFF on Air is the Australian Frequent Flyer travel podcast featuring tips, tricks and chat for Australian travellers. This fortnightly podcast is hosted by the AFF editorial team.
Phil Hawkins has worked in loyalty programs for 25 years, and was most recently the Chief Operating Officer at Flybuys in Australia. In this episode, Matt chats to Phil about some of the things he’s learned during his career in loyalty. Find out what happens behind the scenes, what makes a good (or bad) … Continued
AFF on Air continues with its series of podcasts looking at what it’s like travelling to different destinations around the world as international borders open up again. In this episode, Matt speaks to two Australian frequent flyers who recently travelled to the UK. One of them flew to London with Qantas via Darwin, while … Continued
Many Australians are understandably a bit wary of travelling overseas at the moment in case they catch COVID-19 while they’re away. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to Australian Frequent Flyer forum moderator Bill MacCubbin (whose AFF username is “straitman”) on a recent trip to Fiji. But it wasn’t really a horror story at … Continued
Although many Australians would like to travel overseas over the coming year, many are holding off for now. That’s totally understandable – there are still so many unknowns and risks involved with overseas travel in 2022. But is it really that scary out there? For those who’ve been stuck inside Australia for the past two … Continued
In the final AFF on Air podcast episode for 2021, Matt is joined by the owner of Australian Frequent Flyer Clifford Reichlin for a chat about the challenges of running a travel website during a pandemic – when nobody can travel. Also in this episode, how to get an upgrade when flying with Qantas … Continued
As the international border reopens, some Australians are starting to book overseas trips using their frequent flyer points. But post-pandemic award travel is a bit different – the pandemic has turned award availability on its head, and Australians are also using their points to travel to different places than before. In this episode, Matt … Continued
In this episode, Matt chats to frequent flyer and lifetime Qantas Platinum member Chris Gibbs about how he managed to earn well over 100,000 lifetime status credits on Qantas, what he learned along the way and his thoughts on the future of business travel after the pandemic. Also in this episode, international travel insurance options … Continued
Bonza is a new Australian start-up airline with big plans to carve its own niche out of the Australian domestic aviation market when it launches in the second quarter of 2022. Operating a small fleet of Boeing 737-MAX 8s with 186 Economy seats each, Bonza won’t be competing with Qantas and Virgin for business … Continued
Yesterday, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet announced some big news: From 1 November 2021, vaccinated Australians will finally be allowed to leave the country, and return from overseas into NSW without having to quarantine. There’s a lot to unpack from this announcement. Joining Matt to do so on this episode of AFF on AIR is … Continued
The Australian government has announced that international border restrictions will start to be relaxed from next month. In this podcast, Matt explains what we do and don’t know so far about the new border arrangements and how Qantas plans to restart international flights from November – a month ahead of schedule. Also in this … Continued
Many previous episodes of the AFF on Air podcast have explored the difficulty of getting back to Australia during the pandemic. Navigating the current system is clearly a nightmare for travellers. In this episode, we’ll get an airline’s perspective. Karl Schubert is the Public Relations Manager for Singapore Airlines in the South West Pacific … Continued
Returning to Australia over the coming few months is likely to be as hard as it’s ever been during this pandemic. But there is light at the end of the tunnel! Australia is on track to ease some international travel restrictions and introduce home quarantine for some vaccinated travellers by the end of this … Continued