Qantas Classic Reward & Upgrade Devaluation on 5 August 2025

[serfty]

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[levelnine]

The original post (QFF classic F to LAX) was about inflation - carrier charges have gone up. That's literally the topic, regardless of what you identify it to be.
Just because you wrongly thought it was about something else, doesn't make you right.

Your dishonesty in indicating I suggested no alternatives.. you literally quoted my post that contained some alternatives.
You should be banned from this forum for intentionally causing harm and being a liar.

Putting all the off-topic personal attacks to one side, the topic is whether $600 in carrier charges is a bargain or not.

When one takes into account the fact that competing award programs offer the exact same flights for not only lower carrier charges but also fewer points, the answer is clearly no.

Comparing a F award ticket to a F cash fare is falling for the oldest trick in the frequent flyer book — 'look I got 10c per point from my points by booking this one-way F award'. There's a reason no one takes those comparisons seriously, and assigns them to the category of 'click bait'.

 

[mviy]

Even after the devaluation I have enough points to fly J return to LHR ~3 times. I just need the seats to be made available for the times I choose to fly and not get taken by other members first.

If QF finds that demand for points seats drops too much they can re-evaluate whether to do something about that e.g. make it easier to earn more points in one way or another.

I think there’s probably many people like me with more points than they can spend easily.

 

[Youfah Mizzum]

I just need the seats to be made available for the times I choose to fly and not get taken by other members first.

And there's another full, lengthy thread on that.
Basically, now that QF drop award seats at unpredictable random times - often as close as a few days out from TOT - it's incredibly hard to snare those elusive seats. Back in the golden pre-COVID era, it was typically 353 days out. Just log on when the date swings around (set your calendar alert!) and bang! You're in.

But like I said...off thread topic. See this AFF article

Reward Seat Release Patterns Have Changed Fundamentally

Qantas no longer releases most Classic Reward seats on international flights 353 days in advance. Instead, airlines are releasing frequent flyer redemption seats in batches closer to departure.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

 

[Kangol]

They simply decide it's not worth the effort collecting points as it no longer makes sense economically factoring in the increased costs & limitations on reward seats. There are limits on price increases on an item people don't actually need - we aren't talking break and milk here.

They disengage with the loyalty program.
Pretty simple.

Notice how you ignored the question about what you personally assign as greed.
Answer it and let's see if that's based on rationality.

Customers are disengaging with QFF? Do you mean their profits have shrivelled to almost zero?

 

[Kangol]

Putting all the off-topic personal attacks to one side, the topic is whether $600 in carrier charges is a bargain or not.

When one takes into account the fact that competing award programs offer the exact same flights for not only lower carrier charges but also fewer points, the answer is clearly no.

Comparing a F award ticket to a F cash fare is falling for the oldest trick in the frequent flyer book — 'look I got 10c per point from my points by booking this one-way F award'. There's a reason no one takes those comparisons seriously, and assigns them to the category of 'click bait'.

The average QFF member who is lucky enough to get an F award to LAX (including non WP/P1) is not in the same position to join another program and earn to the level where they can get an F award, if available.

Just because it's offered, doesn't mean it can be booked.

If the QFF member has to pick between using QFF points and $600 for an LAX F award, vs not booking it using a points currency they don't have and cannot convert to easily/within the rules, where availability is even more scarce than for QFF in general, $600 is a bargain.

Sitting in an F seat vs not sitting in the seat. Guess which one people would pick?

 

[MelbFlyer]

Yep, nowadays it's much more random.

You've probably got a better chance of finding business reward seats either within 1-2 weeks of your intended dates (I suspect as they're unsold), or at some other random time, instead of 200-300+ days from departure.

I managed to find my upcoming desired business reward seat around 80-90 days from departure, but I suspect that was more due to someone cancelling / changing their trip instead of Qantas doing a mass release as it was only 1 business reward seat on the day I wanted.

Sometimes spending half your day each day on the Qantas website, as frustrating as it can be at times, pays off in the end.

That same reward seat now costs 82.1k pts instead of 68.4k pts, and taxes are probably higher now too.

 

[levelnine]

The average QFF member who is lucky enough to get an F award to LAX (including non WP/P1) is not in the same position to join another program and earn to the level where they can get an F award, if available.

Just because it's offered, doesn't mean it can be booked.

If the QFF member has to pick between using QFF points and $600 for an LAX F award, vs not booking it using a points currency they don't have and cannot convert to easily/within the rules, where availability is even more scarce than for QFF in general, $600 is a bargain.

Sitting in an F seat vs not sitting in the seat. Guess which one people would pick?

If you're going to dismiss other award programs as a relevant points of comparison because it is difficult to attain points in that program, then you also have to dismiss the cash price as a relevant point of comparison because the 'average QFF member' would never spend $20,000 on a single airplane ticket.

They're both meaningless comparisons by this logic.

If we're speculating about the 'average QFF member', my guess would be that they collect frequent flyer points in the expectation/hope of a free flight. Having to pay $600 each way for their award flight means it is far from free — indeed, it now costs approximately the same as a cash economy ticket — and, therefore, not a bargain. Especially after they have likely paid hundreds of dollars in credit cards annual fees to attain those points or foregone hundreds of dollars in savings on their Woolworths shop by choosing points over cash back.

 

[flyguy77]

Notice how you ignored the question about what you personally assign as greed.
Answer it and let's see if that's based on rationality.

Customers are disengaging with QFF? Do you mean their profits have shrivelled to almost zero?

Oh sorry I didn't realise I had to respond to the demand of answering your questions...

Greed is doubling carrier charges and charging significantly more than all other carriers and reward programs on the exact same routes. Fiji, American, United - all lower.

I never said people are currently disengaging - people WILL disengage if there is no outsized value for the effort involved and limited availability compared to just paying for flights.

There's still a huge pile of Business/First Class seats available to Europe and America from their recent points planes....perhaps people are already baulking at these prices.

 

[MelbFlyer]

There's still a huge pile of Business/First Class seats available to Europe and America from their recent points planes....perhaps people are already baulking at these prices.

You'd be quite surprised - I'm part of a few FB groups where the topic is regarding collecting points.

There's still surprisingly a lot of people out there who have 6 figures of points but aren't aviation pundits like the most of us here and aren't in the know of how to redeem their points for flights, let alone even knew about the impending devaluation of their points and increases etc.

I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who saved up 75k pts in order to redeem perhaps their first time business class reward seat, only to be shocked to find out it now costs 90k pts plus higher taxes.

 

[Aeryn]

The points planes aren't at very convenient times.

Whilst Im not happy that J award fees have increased, I would have preferred they did smaller increase across all classes (after all most points redemptions are in whY) they are still a lot less than the fees for J seats on EK and QR.

As I earn points naturally through my usual spending; as long as the taxes for J redemptions dont exceed the cost of a whY seat then I will still redeem them.