QFF or EK Skywards for a Frenchman

[here2go]

We have a French au pair coming to stay with us for six months. They haven't travelled much from their native Bordeaux previously, and are now flying to Australia on EK, and then JQ (Codeshare QF) to DRW.

Who would you recommend they join for value in terms of Frequent Flyer membership? EK or QF.

QF obviously has OW benefits, with flights across Europe with AY, BA, IB, AB, and potentially earn, and definitely burn on JQ in Australia. With EK, you can spend with EasyJet, but there are no local earning partners.

My recommendation to them is to get a QFF Membership before travelling. However, noting that not all things are equal in terms of earning and burning, what do you think?

Cheers!

 

[JohnK]

Are they likely to travel much in the future?

I am not sure about Skywards but with QFF those points expire after 18 months of inactivity but one is easily able to extend the validity of the QFF points for another 18 months.

 

[Primadon]

Several things to consider. As JohnK says, the points do expire after 18 months if there's no valid activity on a QFF membership.
Is the au pair staying in Australia after their six months with you is over?
Is there future travel planned for the au pair? Also depending on the booking class, the QFJQ codeshare to DRW may not even be eligible for points (check the Airline Earning Table at qantas.com).
All this to say that is there any point in joining up your au pair if there's going to be no further activity once they return to France and therefore any points earned will expire 18 months from their return. Most international members don't keep their account active; particularly if they're not frequent flyers.
Finally, what class are they travelling? If they're flying coach, they'll get .50 point per mile to Australia and return flying EK, 0 points if flying QFJQ codeshare within Australia, and therefore the amount of points they do earn won't be enough to do very much anyway (unless they want to donate to UNICEF).
Considering it's an Australian based program, it's not very user friendly for non-active overseas members.

 

[andye]

I definitely think it's worth him signing up (for free) to something-even if he redeems for a giftcard that's better than nothing. Below is assuming he's not about to become a very frequent flyer or acquire status in the near future.

Earning
Both QF and EK would be 0.5 points earned per mile flown in discount economy, so about 5K one way. If in a fare class that earned more per mile on EK than QF, it would make a difference .
Flying plans while in Aus may be relevant (would he want to visit Sydney, Melbourne, Barrier reef etc while here) which would push further to QF. Having said that, if spending his own money, he would still almost certainly be better to go with best available fare rather than flying QF just for the points

Burning
If he flew back with EK or QF (or other OW if in QFF), he could have enough points for an economy flight redemption-unlikely to be great value though-with Air Berlin you could get over 1c/mile value starting at 10000 Qantas points one-way. An Easyjet redemption from Emirates might get about 0.7c per mile value, starting at 7500 skyward miles.
Things such as gift cards in the Emirates High Street seem to be coming in at around 0.3c per point compared to 0.6c in Qantas Store

I'd go with Qantas.

If he had been flying in on QF flight numbers and not in Discount Economy (which only earn 25% miles), an alternative would have been crediting the flights to BA Exec Club, which has reasonably good value low-point short-haul redemptions