Your Qantas year in review (2025)

[Vic]

I got my Qantas Year in Review 2025 email (pasted above) and the data nerd in me noticed it actually includes some aggregate Platinum One numbers, which I don’t recall seeing before. Out of curiosity I ran the maths, because it feeds straight into my long-running “how many P1s are there really?” curiosity.

From the email:
Together, you booked over 178,000 flights
Collectively, you earned 11 million Status Credits, averaging 5.6× more per member than Gold Frequent Flyers

That 11m Status Credits figure is the interesting bit.

If you spread that total across a reasonable range of average SC earn per P1, you end up with something like:
• 3,600 SC avg (absolute minimum P1) → ~3,050 P1s
• 4,000 SC avg → ~2,750 P1s
• 5,000 SC avg → ~2,200 P1s
• 6,000 SC avg → ~1,830 P1s

So yes, you can get to ~3k members, but only if the average P1 is basically scraping in at threshold. That doesn’t feel that realistic once you look at the rest of the data.

The same email says P1s booked 178,000 flights in total. Even at ~2,500 members, that’s still ~70 flights per person per year. Personally I flew 55 segments but ended up just over 7,000 SC — and that 55 doesn’t include ~20 segments on OW carriers. Even allowing for that, it suggests the averages are being dragged up more by long-haul and premium cabin flying than by sheer segment volume.

Another thing that surprised me: 178k flights over ~2–2.5k P1s is about 500 flights a day. That’s a fair bit of flying concentrated into not many people.

The other useful cross-check is the 5.6× Gold line. If Golds are averaging roughly 900–1,100 SC a year, that puts the average P1 somewhere around 5–6k SC, which again pushes the cohort closer to the lower end of the range above rather than the top.

The one thing I haven’t really allowed for yet is DSC, so happy to hear views on how much that might skew things — but even allowing for a bit of promo uplift, it’s hard to see how you get to 4k without assuming most P1s are right on the threshold.

Probably need to think about the distribution a bit more, it's unlikely to be a normal distribution within the P1 cohort. Probably more like a big lump at 3600 SC and then a long tail. that will skew the averages.
For example, if we say 1500 earn minimum that's 5.4 million SC, that would leave 1000 with an average 5600. No idea how to make that split, just speculating here.

The other intersting part of the comparison to gold is that means Gold flyers earned ~2000000 SC, that means the maximum number of gold is between ~2850 (700 SC) and 3300 (600 SC). If we average the earn at 650 SC - then maximum gold is 3080. If we split the range from gold to platinum (900SC to 1050 SC) that's 1900 to 2200 golds...
Could Gold be more exclusive than P1? Nah I misread that bit. But if we go with 2500 P1 that might get to average gold earn of 785 SC.

Or perhaps the numbers in the email are dodgy?

edit: The number of flights, could they be an assessment of average flight times to estimate the number of people? hmm

Edit2: went down a rabbit hole with ChatGPT.
It's onboard with 2300 to 2500 platinum one, or 3-4 P1 per 10,000 members.
Estimated 6 -9 million QFFs based on the follow. Which means 65000 to 85000 platinum members.

2. Typical tier distribution in large airline programs​

In mature airline loyalty programs:

Tier	% of total membership (typical)
Base / Silver	85–92%
Gold	6–10%
Platinum	0.8–1.5%
Invitation-only top tier	0.03–0.08%

These ranges are very stable across global carriers.

 

[justinbrett]

Probably need to think about the distribution a bit more, it's unlikely to be a normal distribution within the P1 cohort. Probably more like a big lump at 3600 SC and then a long tail. that will skew the averages.
For example, if we say 1500 earn minimum that's 5.4 million SC, that would leave 1000 with an average 5600. No idea how to make that split, just speculating here.

The other intersting part of the comparison to gold is that means Gold flyers earned ~2000000 SC, that means the maximum number of gold is between ~2850 (700 SC) and 3300 (600 SC). If we average the earn at 650 SC - then maximum gold is 3080. If we split the range from gold to platinum (900SC to 1050 SC) that's 1900 to 2200 golds...
Could Gold be more exclusive than P1? Nah I misread that bit. But if we go with 2500 P1 that might get to average gold earn of 785 SC.

Or perhaps the numbers in the email are dodgy?

edit: The number of flights, could they be an assessment of average flight times to estimate the number of people? hmm

Edit2: went down a rabbit hole with ChatGPT.
It's onboard with 2300 to 2500 platinum one, or 3-4 P1 per 10,000 members.
Estimated 6 -9 million QFFs based on the follow. Which means 65000 to 85000 platinum members.

2. Typical tier distribution in large airline programs​

In mature airline loyalty programs:

Tier	% of total membership (typical)
Base / Silver	85–92%
Gold	6–10%
Platinum	0.8–1.5%
Invitation-only top tier	0.03–0.08%

These ranges are very stable across global carriers.

ChatGPT is hardly an authority, it’s just referencing random reddit threads featuring people talking out of their cough.

The only stat that has been released is total members, which is over 15 million (it grows quickly so the difference in number depends on the age of the source).

Safe to assume P1 is an exclusive group but the rest is just wild speculation.