How Long Do Oneworld Flights Take to Credit to Qantas Frequent Flyer?

When you fly Qantas and credit the flight to Qantas Frequent Flyer, the points and status credits will usually show up in your account within a few hours. Sometimes, in fact, your Qantas Points and status credits will even land before you do!

But what about on partner airlines? How long can you expect to wait for your points and status credits to post to your Qantas Frequent Flyer account when you fly with Oneworld carriers or other partners?

The answer depends on which airline you’re flying with, and there’s quite a bit of variation…

Average times for Qantas Points to credit for Oneworld flights

According to feedback from the Australian Frequent Flyer (AFF) community, it typically takes around the following amounts of time flying with each Oneworld airline to receive your Qantas Points and status credits:

Airline	Typical wait time for Qantas Points & status credits
Alaska Airlines	3–9 days
American Airlines	1–2 days
British Airways	4–7 days
Cathay Pacific	The following Tuesday evening
Fiji Airways	Either the following Monday or the Monday after that
Finnair	4–6 days
Iberia	Either the following Thursday or the Thursday after that
Japan Airlines	The following Monday
Malaysia Airlines	[No current data]
Oman Air	[No current data]
Qantas	Up to 24 hours
Qatar Airways	1–2 days
Royal Air Maroc	2 days
Royal Jordanian	1–2 days
SriLankan Airlines	[No current data]

What about other Qantas partner airlines?

We also have data points on the typical wait to receive frequent flyer points and status credits after flying with the following Qantas partner airlines:

• Emirates: 2 days
• Jetstar: 2 days
• LATAM Airlines: 2 weeks

Why it takes longer for some flights to credit than others

If you’re waiting after a flight for those final status credits you need to upgrade your tier, or for your Qantas Points to post so you have enough for a specific redemption, it can sometimes feel like a long wait. So, it’s good to know what to expect.

If your Qantas Points and status credits still haven’t arrived after a week, it could just be that this is normal for the airline you flew. While flights on some airlines credit quickly, other partner airlines share passenger data with Qantas in batches. This may only happen once per week, or even less frequently.

For example, Cathay Pacific sends through a list of all its passengers who credited their flights to Qantas Frequent Flyer during the past week on Tuesdays. Once Qantas receives this information, it will credit its frequent flyers with the points and status credits owed. That’s why you’ll almost always receive your points and status credits for Cathay Pacific flights on a Tuesday afternoon or evening.

But with other partner airlines, like American Airlines or Qatar Airways, it can be a lot quicker. The process happens much faster in the back-end, so flights will usually post to your Qantas account within a day or two.

By the way, don’t worry if the status credits for your flight arrive after the end of your Qantas Frequent Flyer membership year. They’ll be backdated to the departure date of your flight.

Sometimes you’ll need to submit a missing points claim

If you’ve been waiting significantly longer than the usual processing time for a particular partner airline, it could be because the fare class you booked was ineligible to earn Qantas Points and status credits. This is something that unfortunately catches out a lot of people. You can check which fare classes are eligible to earn with Qantas Frequent Flyer on the Qantas website.

Another common issue that could prevent points from crediting automatically is a mismatch between the name on your ticket and your frequent flyer account. For example, the name on your Qantas Frequent Flyer account might include your middle name, but the middle name wasn’t on your ticket. You can still earn points if the names don’t match exactly, but Qantas might need to manually process your missing points claim.

If you did book an eligible fare on a Qantas partner airline, it’s also possible that something just randomly went wrong in the back-end and you’ll need to follow up with a missing points claim.

You can claim missing points on the Qantas website between 3 days and 12 months after flying.

That said, it’s rare for flights on some partner airlines to credit within 3 days. In general, we’d suggest waiting at least two weeks before submitting a missing points claim with Qantas. Often, the flight will eventually credit without you needing to do anything – even if takes a bit longer than usual.

If the online form doesn’t work, try sending an email to the Qantas Frequent Flyer Service Centre.

Qantas might ask for proof that you took the flight. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to keep your boarding pass until the flight has credited to your frequent flyer account!

What’s your experience?

You can read about other AFF member experiences, and let the community know now how long you’ve waited for your Qantas Frequent Flyer points and status credits to post, on our forum: