Qantas unveils the biggest changes to status in program history

[Johnxx]

Is the soft landing from Platinum to Gold guaranteed?
If so I see the points increase in retention as an incentive to soft landing to gold for a year before going hard (with DSC) in the first 6 months of your new membership year.

Membership year 1: no status for 6 months but doesn’t matter as you are mainly flying business on DSC then Platinum for the remaining 6 months

Membership year 2: Platinum with no chasing SC

Membership year 3: Gold with no chasing SC

Membership year 4: chase SC hard for first 6 month….etc etc

 

[FlyingKangaroo]

They have ignored the wish list from many AFF members:

To reduce LTP target to a more realistic threshold.
Give LTG a 700 SC head start each year
Take away all options to earn SC on the ground

Though to be fair I don’t think any of those were that likely to happen.

They of course just wanted a portfolio of feedback they could pull from to cite where it suited their plans and gauge the strength of backlash where it didn't to decide if they needed to tweak. It was never about actually designing the plans in response to that feedback. Then again, I'm a cynic (imagine).

I also can't help but feel VA's obliteration of Velocity helped enable this, so I blame VA for the negative parts of this I don't like, too. This is VA's fault. (Yes, BA and others but in terms of the local market, hard to imagine with the timing that VA so brutally demotivating their own members didn't help set the stage for this. The beatings will continue until morale improves.)

 

[Cessna 180]

After reading through some of the thread and the fine details from Q, I feel My personal experience as some one who generally just scrapes in to WP is that the changes will be a little worse. I generally earn ~1000 sc from flying and get a little help from the loyalty bonus or the odd DSC to get me over the 1200 threshold.
This year however has seen my highest total for some time and I probably will finish a little over 1400 thanks to earn on the ground and three DSC promos that happened to coincide with my bookings.

As my bookings are short notice therefore more expensive I feel that I am paying a lot more than some on this forum to earn my 1200. Controversial to many on here, some form of SC earn based on spend for flights would in some way be 'fairer'

Re the retirement of points club: I actually found the scheme quite simple and easy to understand.

Qantas says this based on feed back from members. I certainly did not get asked and I most likely would have told them to leave it as it is save for perhaps some matrix between $$$ spent on flight and distance traveled.

I do agree something needed to be done with the platinum tier from 1200 to 1400. The first class lounges in Sydney and Singapore are always packed and overrun whenever we go. The first class lounge in Sydney also needs a total refurbishment it’s so worn from the tables to the bathrooms.

The crowding may be true, but I do feel that my domestic slogging around on overpriced economy fares deserves my once or so annual visit to an F lounge.

 

[moa999]

They have ignored the wish list from many AFF members:

Would have said that was more a wet dream list.

Personally as someone on 19k SC but lower work travel the new banked platinum doesn't really excite me - it's still a long way away.

 

[PineappleSkip]

I would have thought the opposite.

By increasing retain thresholds and removing a lot of free/cheap/easy ways to gain extra SCs (loyalty bonuses, PCP rollover, etc), they have committed themselves to retaining DSC offers for the foreseeable future to maintain the ranks.

If they also stopped DSC offers, their elite numbers would crash, which would be terrible from a Loyalty perspective as these people will have been released from the golden handcuffs.

I might be naive, but I thought the main reason for DSCs was boosting sales. It’s just a different kind of sale.