Quickest and Easiet way to get Silver Status on Qantas FF

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Jake Sauvage

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I have been a member at Qantas since September 2013 and currently have around 26,000 points and 20 status credits.

I know i have to get to 200 status credits, but does anyone know what the quickest and easiest way to get to silver?

If you can give me any tips that would be great
 
Welcome to AFF :D

To qualify PS you need 300 SC's ... to requalify you need 250.

You also need at least four Points/SC earning flights on QF or Jetstar flight numbers.

Being based the UK this is an interesting situation.

To get the four flights you could grab a return sale fare on BA/IB to Asia and do some Jetstar flights booked with the "plus" package.

As for cost effective SC earn, some cheap BA/AA/IB tickets to the USA and some discounted business/First fares should gather those SC's pretty quickly. In fact SG is quite advisable for not much more effort & cost.

Having posted all that are you sure you want to earn status with QFF? The AA & BA frequent flyer programs may be more suited for you.
 
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Thanks everyone for the warm welcome into this great forum.

Well I was looking at doing a around the world flight

London to Cape town

Cape Town to Johannesburg

Johannesburg to Sydney

Sydney to brisbane

Brisbane to London via dubai


Do you think that should get me to silver?

Also I have been looking at doing the BA ff program I have registered with them but I have a lot more qantas points and fly more with qantas.

And the reason I would like to go to silver is that don't you get lounge passes when your bronze you don't get anything and it's the next step up.
 
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome into this great forum.

Well I was looking at doing a around the world flight

London to Cape town

Cape Town to Johannesburg

Johannesburg to Sydney

Sydney to brisbane

Brisbane to London via dubai


Do you think that should get me to silver?

Also I have been looking at doing the BA ff program I have registered with them but I have a lot more qantas points and fly more with qantas.

And the reason I would like to go to silver is that don't you get lounge passes when your bronze you don't get anything and it's the next step up.

You only get one rather restrictive lounge pass. Which IMHO isn't worth it unless you are aiming for gold.
 
Have a go at this calculator. https://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/do/dyns/initialPointsEarned (it may take a few secs to load completely).

You should be able to fill in the airline you propose to fly with segment by segment (or the marketer of that flight#), the cabin class and your FF level and it will calculate the Status Credits and points you should earn on the journey, therefore see the total earn to see where it will get you. If you are just shy of gold, say, you may want to upgrade one of the legs to achieve gold (which is of course one of the main reasons for QF supplying this calculator :) )

# Flights with a QF flight number, therefore marketed by QF (ie code shared on a BA operated flight) earn substantially better than non QF designated flights (but you may pay more for the flight). I think the calculator will show an option of a QF flight number if its available.

I entered your itinerary, putting in discount economy for every leg, Bronze FFer and the flights it automatically chose, and it gave me 12,451 points and 170 SCs.

You need 300 SCs to qualify for silver, so you would be short, unless you boost the cabin class. using a mix of Economy and Flexible Economy gave 315 SCs.
 
Thanks RooFlyer

Thanks for finding out how many points and SCs i would get from that itinerary i sent.

The reason i would like to go silver is because its the next stage up. But the thing is i don't fly a lot.

For example i hit 170 SCs last year flying with Qantas and Emirates from London to Brisbane then to Adelaide back to London.

But i then realised they get rid of the SCs because you haven't flown in a year.

That is really frustrating.

I now as i said have 20 SCs

But what does it mean by lifetime SCs. Do i get anything if i hit 300 but not in the same year?


And i see your Platinum. Whats it like? Do you get treated defiantly to lets say gold and silver?
 
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What do you mean you get a restrictive lounge pass?

I guess if you are a heavily FF then i doubt you would be on silver for a while then you would just get gold
 
Thanks RooFlyer

Thanks for finding out how many points and SCs i would get from that itinerary i sent.

The reason i would like to go silver is because its the next stage up. But the thing is i don't fly a lot.

For example i hit 170 SCs last year flying with Qantas and Emirates from London to Brisbane then to Adelaide back to London.

But i then realised they get rid of the SCs because you haven't flown in a year.

That is really frustrating.

I now as i said have 20 SCs

But what does it mean by lifetime SCs. Do i get anything if i hit 300 but not in the same year?


And i see your Platinum. Whats it like? Do you get treated defiantly to lets say gold and silver?

Lifetime SCs mean nothing except a number. There is no coughulative award or status. SCs expire every year and everyone starts again from zero; but requalification next time is a little bit easier than first qualification. Silver is better than bronze, but the benefits are at the margin. Better than nothing! If you don't think you'll be flying to at least Silver level (like the RtW trip you are doing this year), and so be able to enjoy your Silver status, then I would question chasing the Silver status this year. Might be better to take the best flight / fare on the day.

Platinum is worth having - you are higher up the pecking order for everything - seat allocation, Award tickets, First lounge access regardless of ticket purchases, greater luggage allowance. For the true frequent flyer, the benefits are tangible and welcome. But it requires a lot of serious flying to achieve it.

There is a phenomenon called a 'status run'. These are flights people take which are relatively cheap $ wise, but yield good SCs. Good for getting to the next status level up if your regular flying doesn't do it. Flights in the US on AA are good for this, but I've never studied them closely (I do enough regular flying :) ). Have a look through the thread here, based on 'Status run'.
 
Thats what i thought.

Its just frustrating as i was close to getting silver.

So because i come from the UK to think its best to go with British Airways. When i am in Australia i find it easy to collect points with qantas. From going to Woolworths with the everyday card savings. To hiring a car.

But now i am thinking i should go with BA as they are british.

What company do you think does the best FF program?
 
Its probably easier sometimes to go with the local ff program because you can usually take out credit cards and do local shopping to earn points and all with credit cards and build up points/miles and then book business class flights and then you get all the perks of Gold or so with extra luggage, priority boarding, lounge access etc, etc...

There will be more than a few people on this site who do all sorts of strange things to get or maintain status and good luck to them for that, booking Qantas seats that can be hundreds of dollars more than other airlines just as good, spend hundreds or thousands of dollars flying to places to get straight back on the plane and come home, burning up points an dollars to earn that Gold or Platinum level.. I'm sure for many it makes their travel much nicer and for more than a few i think its also a boost to their egos or morale... Whatever floats your boat...

Me personally, i fly on my own dime and on personal holidays, i have from time to time got a bit caught up in thoughts of how i could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to earn a bit of upgraded plastic card and bag tags, then each time i think it through a bit and find i just can't make it add up for me... If I spend money on status runs that is money i can't spend on my holidays or some other part of my life, if i faf around flying to nowhere and back that is leave or time i can't spend in places like Europe or the US that I really want to be in.... Plus where i live in Perth there aren't lots of cheaps status runs like the cities on the East Coast where there are many more cheap flight options...

I fly a couple of times a year intercontinental and fly business class and they are all using award seats which earn zero status credits, I'm Qantas bronze with 0 SC and yet i enjoy my travel a lot... And as i say each time i think about trying artificially for status i figure that would just be playing Qantas's game, that's what they want me to do is get some status fever that I have to spend lots of money to get to some lousy silver level which offers you next to nothing... Maybe a lounge pass... When flying Qantas and American Airlines you can buy an American Airlines 30 day lounge pass for $100 (not sure its honoured by BA) which will get you into lounges... I have applied for a couple of credit cards in the last year for free and gotten some lounge passes with them...

I bought some miles in US Airways 2-1 miles sales a while ago and just flew Perth-Bangkok-Hong Kong-Seoul-LAX-Wash DC (stop)-Addis Ababa (stop)-Johannesburg-Perth in business class with lounge access, priority boarding and all the rest for for probably less than A$2000???

None of this is to brag, just to say there are other ways to get all these perks of high status passengers just by accumulating miles and points etc and doing it smartly rather than get wrapped up in some status game if it you have to jump through hoops and shell out lots of your own hard earned rather than being in a situation where your work flies you around to get most of your status which would be very nice...

Silver really isn't worth making a lot of time and expending a lot of money to reach is what many will say anyway....
 
If you don't fly much it is generally best to buy the flights with the best price that suits you (ie don't spend extra cash buying status you are unlikely to use very often)
Having said that: If you are UK based and don't fly a great deal I would suggest crediting any Oneworld flights* to BA. You can top up your points from supermarket spend at Tescos and get a UK points-earning credit card. The taxes on BA reward flights are usually high (like Qantas) but you may get value from the short-haul reward flight savers. A good place to research maximising the BA scheme is the headforpoints website.
If you fly a reasonable amount and can get to the US once a year the AA scheme will often be better

*note that if you really want to fly Australia to London via Dubai, you would need to be very careful which flights earn Status Credits and points with the various schemes
 
Also see the BA Exec Club forum on FlyerTalk.
I can't see QF silver being of much use to you as already suggested.
I'm silver too but will reach gold next month.
 
Status is a funny thing, those who have it grow blasé about it and then wonder why anyone would bother unless it was also to reach uber ultra premium by invitation only platinum. Those who don't have status, all they can do is keep looking at those whom walk into the lounges / premium lines whilst stating "this isn't so great" and wishing that they themselves had that problem.

Now that said, the question needs to be asked, why specifically qantas silver? Yes there are some nice inclusions which you do get as a silver (eg premium check-in lines), I don't think it's quite something I would be aiming for half a world away. Silver is equivalent to one world ruby, so perhaps that's should be your goal. Unless your goal is to fly JQ as a silver, holding PS isn't really going to do very much which OWR cant' do. Fly any OW airline, and by virtue of OWR, you'd be treated the same as a PS. If you are looking at PS as a way to assist with EK flying, perhaps looking at joining skywards would be a better bet.

I guess if you are a heavily FF then i doubt you would be on silver for a while then you would just get gold

You're confusing Qantas Frequent Flyer, with a program which is based on bum in seat time. The amount of SC's earned often have very little to do with actual distance flown, and much more do to with class flown, example fly SYD-MEL return in business = 90 SC's, SYD-LAX return using sale fare = 90 SC's.

It's possible for a silver to actually have more flying time than a platinum.
 
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Thats what i thought.

Its just frustrating as i was close to getting silver.

So because i come from the UK to think its best to go with British Airways. When i am in Australia i find it easy to collect points with qantas. From going to Woolworths with the everyday card savings. To hiring a car.

But now i am thinking i should go with BA as they are british.

What company do you think does the best FF program?

This is s good example of investing time to research your travel habits and competing benefits.

Read the websites and forums and targeted questions will yield more benefits.

I did laugh at your comment that BA are British !! They are a lot of things including being British.

Happy flighting......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVi6GgQBkwE&sns=em
 
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