Advice Please - Qantas loyalty vs Virgin loyalty

[Bajar]

Howdy everyone,

Long time no post for me - essentially my travel got curtailed by getting married and an interstate client going into liquidation.

Anyway, I am looking for some advice regarding where my loyalty should lie with the two majors.

I was a big Virgin fan and flyer (silver status) up until 2012 when I had three cancelled flights in a row ex. Darwin (all different bookings) and I had a horror experience flying business class out of Perth.

I now hold Silver Qantas status + club membership (due to expire in November) and over 200,000 QFF points. I haven't had a problem with Qantas at all bar a cancelled flight earlier this year. However, their departure from the Woolworths Everyday Reward scheme has prompted my wife and I to begin shopping at Coles to get the Etihad points instead.

My wife is still a big Virgin fan and prefers them over Qantas due to prices and their international network.

Personally, I am ambivalent - I switched out of Virgin because of the way they treated their Northern Territory operations - on time performance is critical for me, but I also like getting bang for my buck out of loyalty programs.

I typically travel 7 times per year for work and family (all ex. Canberra) with usual destinations being Melbourne, Brisbane, Taree and the Gold Coast. My wife and I also like to travel at least once per year overseas - typically to the Asia-Pacific region (via Singapore). We do enjoy our lounge memberships, so that is a definite must have for us. Based on this, what would you recommend? Should we stick with Qantas or join in with Virgin + Etihad alliance?

Thanks in advance!

 

[mooingchicken]

Virgin Pro's:
Family pooling easier to get gold status for one of you.
cheaper redemption taxes
can transfer to SQ if required
often slightly cheaper than qantas (maybe not much anymore?)

Cons
Less airline partners due to not a proper alliance like OW (effect depends on where u fly overseas)
Virgin international a smaller network than qantas.
your previous exp.

Qantas pros
basically virgins cons
more airline reward choices
Potential access to better lounges (first lounge ect)

Cons:
higher taxes for rewards
slightly more expensive

 

[Bolthead]

Based on your number of flights etc.. and as stated by mooingchicken you need to weigh up the best 'bang for your buck'. As for me I was once a Qantas FF as the company I worked for had them as their prefered airline. In the scheme of things I had no choice so I geared all my credit and loyality cards towards QF points. Then when changing jobs the new company had Virgin as a prefered airline. I then changed all my point generation cards to VA. Now that I have been retired for over 2 years all my flights are paid by me and because of family pooling I have managed to maintain my Platinum status with VA whereas my wife and daughter are now slowly loosing their status from Platinum to now Silver. Family Pooling is the only reason we have stuck to VA and if they ever remove this feature god knows what we would do. VA are also slowly improving in my eyes having partnered with Etihad, Singapore, Delta and Air NZ. (etal) You can just about fly anywhere in the world with a VA partner. That does the job for me...

It's a tough decision.. you just need to crunch the numbers and see which scheme suits you best.