How I Make Qantas Reward Availability Work for Me

Qantas Airbus A330-200 at Melbourne Airport
You can get lots of value from Qantas Points if you use it as it’s intended. Photo: Matt Graham.

Qantas Frequent Flyer members often struggle to find Classic Reward seats to international destinations in premium cabins. Indeed, it can be extremely difficult to find multiple Business Class reward seats to popular places like London, Athens or New York. Qantas releases very few seats to these kinds of places on its own flights, and there are only so many rewards on partner airlines to go around.

Despite this, I’ve personally been able to get lots of value from my Qantas points over the years. I redeem dozens of reward flights every year, worth many thousands of dollars, and don’t usually have too much trouble finding seats. But that’s because I’m not trying to book seats that are near-impossible to find. Instead, I take advantage of Qantas Frequent Flyer’s strengths.

Qantas Frequent Flyer is not the program for getting your family to Europe in Business Class

I often see Qantas Frequent Flyer members complaining that they can’t find Classic Reward seats to Europe in Premium Economy, Business or First Class, or that the only available options require multiple long layovers.

The reality is that Qantas Frequent Flyer just isn’t the best program if you want to redeem your points for convenient, direct flights to Europe in Business Class. That’s not to say it’s impossible to find any seats – there are some out there and you may get lucky sometimes. Platinum frequent flyers also have the option of requesting extra Classic Reward seats. But the demand for these reward seats far exceeds the supply.

London, UK
Many Aussies want to travel to London. Photo: Aron Van de Pol on Unsplash.

At the end of the day, this is not how Qantas Frequent Flyer is truly intended to be used. If it was, you wouldn’t have to resort to trickery with the multi-city booking tool to get available connecting flights to Europe to appear on the Qantas website.

I fly multiple times per year to Europe, and Qantas Frequent Flyer helps me to save money getting to Europe in comfort. I’ll explain this in more detail later in the article.

But if I just wanted to easily book premium cabin flights from Australia to Europe with short connections, I wouldn’t be collecting Qantas points.

Every program has its own strengths and weaknesses – use them to your advantage!

The frequent flyer programs of Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways – and to an extent, Virgin Australia – all provide better and more options to get to Europe. For that reason, my points-earning strategy is to diversify and collect points with multiple different airlines.

Singapore Airlines A350-900 regional Business Class seat
You can often find Singapore Airlines Business Class availability from Australia to Europe using KrisFlyer miles. Photo: Matt Graham.

Having credit cards that earn flexible points currencies really helps with this. For example, if you have Amex Membership Rewards points, you can choose to transfer your points to any of the programs I just mentioned, whenever you want. You can simply choose whichever airline has seats when you want to travel, and transfer points into that airline’s program when you’re ready to book.

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Programs like Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer are perfect if you want to book multiple premium seats from Australia to Asia or Europe. But it’s not the best program, for example, if you want to fly to the United States or New Zealand.

So, I save my Qantas points for routes where Qantas offers plenty of Classic Reward availability and redemptions are good value. There are a lot of these – they just aren’t necessarily in the most obvious places. And where using Qantas Frequent Flyer doesn’t make sense, I use something else.

Where does it make sense to redeem Qantas points?

Although many Aussies save up their Qantas points to book long-haul flights, redeeming on domestic routes can be equally good value – or even better. Domestic Qantas flights within Australia are often quite expensive, but Classic Reward seats come at a fixed low price.

I save a lot of money by booking Classic Reward seats on domestic routes like Canberra-Melbourne or Canberra-Brisbane, not just in Business but also in Economy. This may not be as “aspirational” as redeeming points to Europe. But compared to a typical Economy airfare of around $300 for a flight like Canberra-Brisbane, 8,000 Qantas points + $74 for a Classic Reward is a good deal.

Other routes where I find Qantas points relatively easy and good value to use include:

  • Australia to Pacific Islands (such as Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands or Vanuatu)
  • Australia to New Zealand
  • Australia to Chile (flying to Santiago with Qantas or LATAM Airlines)
  • Australia to Johannesburg, flying Qantas on the Airbus A380 (although I wouldn’t try to use Qantas points to fly beyond Jo’burg)
  • There’s plenty of availability to Los Angeles in Economy, and sometimes also Premium, Business or First
  • Trans-Atlantic flights, including from Europe to North America and Europe to South America on partner airlines
  • Domestic USA flights on American Airlines or Alaska Airlines
Qantas Airbus A380 First Class
Currently, Qantas even has reasonable First Class availability to South Africa. Photo: Qantas.

If I’m flying Qantas anyway and have the possibility to upgrade with points, I’ll often also request a Classic Upgrade Reward. Upgrades don’t always come through, but they’re solid value if they do.

Qantas reward availability into Asia

I also find that Qantas often has decent Classic Reward availability on specific point-to-point routes into Asia. You might not always get a seat to Singapore or Japan, but you often can use points on Qantas routes like:

  • Sydney-Jakarta
  • Melbourne-Jakarta
  • Sydney-Manila
  • Brisbane-Manila
  • Melbourne-Hong Kong
  • Sydney-Bengaluru
  • Melbourne-Delhi
You can often find Qantas reward availability to Manila
You can often find Qantas reward availability to Manila, Philippines. Photo: Luca Bucken on Unsplash.

You can often also find seats to Asia on partner airlines, including on routes like:

  • Perth/Melbourne/Sydney/Adelaide-Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines
  • Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane-Taipei on China Airlines
  • Sydney/Melbourne-Colombo on SriLankan Airlines
  • Sydney-Singapore on British Airways
  • Melbourne-Singapore on Emirates (although this route will end soon)

When I travel to Europe, I’ll sometimes use Qantas points to book a positioning flight from Australia to Asia. I’ll then stop over in Asia for a couple of days, which I prefer anyway as it lessens the jetlag.

After a few days of great food and warm weather, I’ll then travel from Asia to Europe on another ticket – often a paid Business Class fare on a different airline that costs a fraction of the price of tickets from Australia to Europe. This strategy works well for me as it gets me to Europe in comfort, while saving me a fair bit of money.

Qantas doesn’t explicitly promise impossible rewards

In fairness, Qantas doesn’t explicitly promise that its frequent flyers can redeem points for multiple Business seats to London. In promotional material, Qantas usually promotes Economy Classic Reward flights on routes that do actually have seats…

Qantas Wine bonus points bonanza email excerpt
Promotional email from Qantas Wine promoting bonus points offers.

Lately, when Qantas has promoted premium cabin reward flights to destinations like London, Tokyo and Bali, it’s been promoting Classic Plus redemptions. These typically cost a lot more than Classic Reward flights but are much more widely available.

Excerpt from a promotional email sent by Qantas on 5 October 2024 about Classic Plus flight rewards
Excerpt from a promotional email sent by Qantas on 5 October 2024.

Summary

If you use Qantas Frequent Flyer as it’s intended, you can probably make it work well for you.

I personally get lots of value by using my Qantas points where it actually makes sense, but using other programs – or buying cash tickets – where it really doesn’t.

If you find that you can’t get reward seats to places you want to go using Qantas points, it may be worth considering switching to a different program.

Some people will probably disagree with my take on this, and that’s of course totally fine! You can share your own thoughts with the AFF community by leaving a comment in the thread linked below.

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
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Community Comments

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I love this article. It doesn’t engage in needless Qantas-bashing, but it clearly articulates the truth that Qantas points are not the wisest FF currency to accumulate if long-haul flights to Europe or North America are the goal.

I’ve saved thousands over the last few years redeeming Qantas points for business class travel within Australia, and have also managed to use Qantas points for a couple of fun “aspirational” bookings (eg. JFK-HND in JAL first class, and SIN-MEL in Emirates first class).

I’ve added the article to my Reading List and next time someone complains that “QFF is a scam because there are no business class flights to London available” or the like, I’ll suggest they read it!

Reply 11 Likes

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Good article.

In fairness to the typical program user, you can understand why they get frustrated with the program. For large numbers of people, premium cabins on long-haul routes are the point of points accumulation (whether aided by Qantas marketing or not). There is a massive, massive cohort who don't really care about most of the routes listed in that article — they don't have much interest in a business class seat on a 3 hour flight to NZ or domestic flight within the US* — but do care about getting a business class seat for the 24 hour trek to Europe/North America. Indeed, that help explains why there is no availability — that's where all the demand is!

It's cold comfort to tell someone that they can use their points on this other thing that they have no interest in.

* And some of the better routes listed in this article are fleeting — eg the SYD-JNB route is currently experiencing great award availability due to the upgauge, but has historically been a very hard route to find premium cabin availability.

Reply 13 Likes

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As intended: Frequent Flyers i.e. Platinum members get the redemptions they want, Gold have a half chance.

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Good article

Australian domestic flights for 8,000 points is a good deal !
Because it’s a distance based measure there can be decent value flying to the limit of the miles (eg adel - Melb, melb - Syd 8,000 or Adelaide - Brissy 12,000. Brissy - Perth 18,000)

the only idea I would add is
Use points to book internal flights on Iberia or BA in Europe - they are similarly priced to our domestic reward tics and are available even a few days before flying. (Noting it’s a good idea to compare the revenue prices before booking as some of them are “dirt cheap” and Euro J Can even be cheaper for longer (and often on late notice bookings cheaper than Y)

As an Australian based program, there’s wide availability there because Australians aren’t competing in large numbers for the reward tics

Reply 2 Likes

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As intended: Frequent Flyers i.e. Platinum members get the redemptions they want, Gold have a half chance.

For high status Qantas Frequent Flyers the article is highly relevant and practical. Making Reward Availability work for you is dependent on your personal circumstances. For Matt (and many of us on AFF for that matter), he’s leveraged his Platinum status and his broad and in depth knowledge of various FF Programs, paid fares and the broader Airline Industry to make it work for him. The article makes some good suggestions for medium haul redemptions, but if we’re being honest, most members want to redeem their points on long haul premium cabins.

Qantas rightfully rewards their highest status members with significantly more award space in long haul premium cabin. And for those in the know, Platinum status members and above can even request Qantas to open up awards that remain firmly unavailable to anyone else. But these upper echelons of status represent such a small niche of members who likely already know the in’s and outs of finding rewards and how to best make it work for them.

For the majority of QFF’ers whom are Silver status or below (~90%), I’m sure they will have a far more challenging experience trying to redeem their points for long haul premium cabin awards. They spend countless hours searching unsuccessfully and eventually give up. In their moment of frustration and despair, their points are seemingly worthless and they believe QFF is a scam. That’s before they’re even quoted the number of points required and the Carrier Charges/Taxes.

Some are more stingy than others, but the reality is that no Airline can ever make awards available on demand to appease all of their members for obvious reasons. For the vast majority of QFF members without any meaningful status, Making Reward Availability Work For Them is indeed very difficult. Linking them back to the article may prove insightful, but it will not fix their problem.

Reply 11 Likes

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I agree that QFF points aren't the best for those who are looking for long haul premium reward seats but it's definitely the easiest and most widespread program in Australia.

I have however, been able to use QFF points from churning CCs to redeem the below medium to long haul flights in business:
- HKG to EWR on CX
- A OWA to Europe, via HKG and SIN (quite difficult, but eventually got there)
- MEL to NRT on QF

I've used VFF points for MEL to SIN via SQ as well.

I find however, that redemptions via VFF definitely have less premium cabin availability though, even compared to QFF.

I think as long as you're able to be flexible and can avoid the Qantas call centre as a non-Gold or above member (I'm only Bronze and seek reward seats rather than status), you should be fine.

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I've been using points to book flights to/from Europe in business class for years but I've had success using Qantas points once, and only once: QF10 from London to Melbourne via Perth. I was able to snag seats for my wife and me in early 2022 -- this was just after the borders had re-opened and most people still had cold feet about going overseas.

Ironically, I subsequently cancelled the booking when Qatar Qsuites came up instead.

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the reality is that no Airline can ever make awards available on demand to appease all of their members for obvious reasons.

And here-in is the problem.

These FF programs are all well past capacity to deliver the really valuable rewards to 99% of their members.

BUT they keep happily taking on and sucking in more and more new members....

A common problem with all big business who simply just care about the dollars.

Reply 4 Likes

I’m also a user of Qantas points for domestic business or economy travel and Int’l business on ‘boutique’ routes not the popular ones.

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It's easy to say that diversification is the way to go but the points ecosystem in Australia has developed in a way that most people will end up collecting Qantas points and a lot of those people want to go to Europe. You are therefore saying that the whole system is designed to fail.

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