Article: Is Qantas or Velocity Status Harder to Earn?

[justinbrett]

lol indeed. Switch the topic to overseas & look over there ...

The article is not about flying domestically.

I’m pretty sure you fit in the group of people I was referring to:

Its been a factor sometimes. For instance, some upcoming bookings to MAD on QR could either originate in CGK or SIN. QR has a premium own lounge in SIN but a Plaza Premium lounge in CGK. SO that was a tick towards SIN.

 

[Hampton Mike]

Its pretty well covered what some of the optimal status runs are in the status run master thread that the OOL-MEL-AKL J runs are among the highest earning. Pair that with some DSC cinematography and you'll get some very cheap status.

There's a few other crazy routes youll find but those tend to be overseas based. Just a note 18k is expensive for a P1 run. You can achieve that much lower if you know what you're doing.

Recent special OOL-MEL-AKL return for $1495 in business yielding 560 SCs per trip (based on DSC). Four status runs for $5980 = 2240 SCs leaving another 1360 to be obtained from other trips. Easy to get if you go to Europe on $ once on DSCs in business class.

 

[antycbr]

VA should be cheaper when you consider the limited attractions of VAs lounge network, the caveats on partner lounge access and lack of differentiation between Gold and Platinum/Business lounges.

Comparing status earn cost isn’t really that meaningful when the bundle of contractual rights you get is so vastly different.

 

[The Flying Brick]

VA Status earning is now just a sad joke.

E.g. Flight from CNS-BNE-SYD in J used to earn 135 Status credits.
Last Saturday the same flights in J earned me only 53 Status Credits in total.

Virgin have gone to the dogs.

And they seem to care much more about them than their Business class passengers.

 

[AFF Editor]

The thing that caught my attention was the notion that a "status runner" could earn Platinum One for a spend of only $18,527 . Are you prepared to spill the beans on that one Matt?

Given how hard it has become to get Classic rewards to Europe (I know everyone wants the same thing!) even as a Plat, I wonder if P1 would bring some worthwhile advantages.

A few people in this thread have already suggested some ways that you could earn Platinum One status for around that price, or even less.

For the purposes of this article, we basically just calculated the cost of earning Platinum One (without DSCs) using the absolute cheapest available status runs out there.

The $18,527 figure is based on using a couple of status runs such as this one (flying on oneworld partners) to earn 900 SCs, and then a bunch of OOL-MEL-AKL status runs in Qantas Business to get the other 2,700 from QF flights. Of course, this doesn't account for the cost of positioning to the start/end points of those status runs, nor the cost of accommodation during overnight transits, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks Matt! Great article specially for someone like me who isn’t much of a VA flyer.

Just want to check I’ve understood this right: with the new status calculation, if Mr.A book an overpriced J ticket for $3k+ and do that twice, Mr.A would go from no status to Silver, then Gold after the second one? So basically two flights and Mr.A's Gold? Or am I missing something here?

(I know… not exactly the best value play!)

Correct. If you're earning your Velocity status credits from VA marketed flights, you're earning 1 status credit per $12 for any Choice, Flex or Business fare. So, buying severely overpriced flights will earn you status quickly.

@AFF Editor one thing that i just thought of that isn't discussed and is very hard to quantify but is a major part of any clued in status player on the QF side is PCP classic awards earnings SC.

That feature (whilst hard to utilise right now as finding QF CR isnt the easiest) can make huge jumps if you're point rich. Ive done Syd - Mel runs via CBR (harder now without the 717s) where ive earnt 72 SC for 18k points +$140 one way during DSC offer.

This year i think im earning 400+ SC from award flights thanks to OWA booked during a DSC.

I did think about including this as part of the article, but there's no equivalent with Velocity. One can't really compare the cost of earning status through Classic Rewards when Velocity doesn't give you this option. It's also a bit hard to calculate the cost of earning status this way with Qantas, since you have to somehow account for the cost of getting Points Club in the first place and the value of the points spent. (I guess we could use the AFF Point Valuations as an estimate for the latter calculation.)