Qantas Points “The Envy of the World”? Absolutely Not!

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce recently told a room full of business leaders and journalists in Perth that the airline’s frequent flyer scheme and points “are the envy of the world”. In this month’s Qantas Magazine, Joyce also wrote that Qantas is “making it easier for members to book that dream trip with Qantas Points”.

Sadly, the reality could not be more different! And this is largely due to factors of Qantas’ own making.

Like any currency, a loyalty program currency such as Qantas points is only as valuable as what you can redeem for. How can Alan Joyce honestly say that Qantas points are the “envy of the world” when so many Qantas Frequent Flyer members currently can’t use their points for the flights they want – or worse, are even having their confirmed reward bookings cancelled due to Qantas’ incompetence?

Qantas routinely failing to ticket reward bookings

One of the most fundamental things that needs to happen, when someone redeems points for a flight booking, is that the booking needs to get ticketed. This is different to making a reservation, and happens when the booking is processed and payment is collected from the passenger. If a booking doesn’t get ticketed, and the passenger doesn’t receive a ticket number, they won’t be able to fly.

This is one of the most basic functions of any airline reservations department. Yet, Qantas is consistently failing to ticket Classic Flight Reward bookings in time.

Simple bookings are usually ticketed within a few minutes, but all too often, more complex bookings are being placed in a manual processing queue. This could be for any number of reasons, including if the booking was made over the phone and the call centre employee made a mistake.

For bookings involving travel on partner airlines, there is a ticketing time limit which could be only a few days. Once this time limit has passed, if the booking has not yet been ticketed, the seats will automatically be cancelled.

Unfortunately, when a Qantas Classic Flight Reward booking involving travel on a partner airline gets placed in a manual processing queue – which is currently happening a lot – it often remains there until long after that partner airline has cancelled the reservation. So, the customer loses their seat/s and may not even realise it.

There have been countless examples on AFF over recent months of reward bookings not getting ticketed, resulting in Qantas Frequent Flyer members losing the flights they had tried to book.

This AFF post is just one example:

8 days out from when I’m due to fly and I still do not have a ticket. The flight which I thought reinstated was apparently “reinstated incorrectly” resulting in my flight saying now “Not Confirmed/On Request”. It has been sitting like this for around 2 weeks, and not a single agent has resolved it. I have called over 6 times, and received calls from AKL/SA customer service agents to be told they will follow up and call me within 48 hours.
I have never received a call back from any of these agents including the Auckland based ones, and everytime I call Qantas back, the same process seems to occur.

1. Talks to their supervisor/support team to check what to do
2. Sends email to oneworld help desk to reinstate flight/check status
3. Informs me that they will “call me back” within 24-48 hours to update me “considering that I am flying very soon”
4. I do not receive any call back within 48-72 hours and I have to call Qantas again for the same process to just happen again.

It is absolutely insane how bad and how incompetent this whole organisation is. I am very close to having to pay thousands of dollars of paid flights and rejig a full itinerary which was ticketed and confirmed months and months ago. No one seems to care enough to take responsibility for my experience, nor do any of the agents care about my case enough to call me back.
– aidan059, 2 June 2022

Even confirmed, ticketed bookings are not safe

Sadly, it gets worse. Even Qantas members with confirmed, ticketed Classic Flight Reward bookings risk losing them at any time through no fault of their own! This is because Qantas also often fails to re-issue Classic Flight Reward tickets when there has been an airline schedule change, or when one of the flights in the booking gets changed or cancelled.

It’s not a customer’s fault if an airline changes the departure time of their flight, but it becomes the customer’s problem when they lose their flights!

In one recent example, an AFF member resorted to emailing Qantas Chief Customer Officer Stephanie Tully to try to get their Oneworld Classic Flight Reward ticket re-issued following a Qatar Airways schedule change. If Qantas’ regular customer service channels were up to scratch, it would never have come to this.

In an even more egregious case, an AFF member with a terminal illness has now given up hope of ever using their Qantas points after making three Classic Flight Reward bookings in a row which were all cancelled following airline schedule changes and Qantas’ subsequent failure to re-issue their tickets.

The Qantas call centre is an absolute joke

While most people would prefer to book Classic Flight Rewards online, the Qantas website has many known bugs. Booking anything complex often results in a Qantas website error message. Flights originating in certain countries, such as Qatar and many others, also cannot be booked online. In these cases, the only option is to phone the Qantas call centre.

If you’re lucky enough to reach Qantas’ Hobart call centre, the staff there are experienced, well-trained and generally able to competently assist. In fact, they are an absolute delight. Sadly, Qantas hasn’t employed enough people at its Hobart call centre to handle the majority of inbound calls.

Unless you have Platinum or Platinum One status with Qantas, your calls will almost always be routed to one of Qantas’ outsourced call centres in either Auckland (if you’re lucky), Cape Town, Suva or Manila.

Many of the staff at these offshore call centres, with the exception of Auckland, lack experience and proper training. There are of course some competent staff at these locations, and they are mostly friendly people. But there are way too many stories on AFF and elsewhere of these staff being unable to successfully assist with basic tasks like booking a Classic Reward ticket and providing woefully incorrect advice.

If you don’t think this is a problem, just read the comments on any of Qantas’ Facebook posts from this year…

When Qantas customers notice that their reward bookings haven’t been ticketed, as explained above, the only option to expedite this is generally to call and hope to reach somebody who can help. But if you get through to one of the outsourced call centres, the staff there will usually just promise the booking will be ticketed within 24 hours and say they will call back. Neither of these things usually happen, and the reward flights are inevitably lost.

Unless you insist that you won’t hang up the phone until you have a ticket number starting in “081”, you’ll probably just have to keep calling back again and again. This isn’t a good use of anybody’s time and would not be necessary if Qantas would simply ticket redemption bookings in a timely manner!

If you’re unsure whether or not your Qantas booking has been ticketed yet, you can try entering your booking reference (PNR) on the Royal Jordanian website and check if there’s a ticket number starting in “081” visible. If you can see a ticket number, a ticket has been issued.

Call centre staff accidentally cancelling bookings

There have also been multiple horrifying reports of Qantas call centre staff accidentally cancelling or downgrading a customer’s confirmed Classic Flight Reward booking when a customer requests a flight change. This seems to be caused by poorly trained agents exiting the booking in Amadeus, rather than ignoring the changes, after going into a booking to try to change something.

Over recent months, Australian Frequent Flyer has highlighted cases where the Qantas call centre has inadvertently downgraded a customer’s Qatar Airways flight from Business to Economy, and where a customer’s reward booking on Japan Airlines was cancelled entirely with no alternative offered until we got involved.

This appears to have now happened at least a third time, with AFF member beeroob saying that their Qantas Business Class redemption booking to London got downgraded to Economy without their knowledge or consent when they called up to simply request a date change. Qantas disputes some of the details of this case but at the time of writing, this has still not been resolved.

As this has happened multiple times that we know about – and likely many more times that we don’t know about – it’s clearly a systematic issue with either Qantas’ reservations system or poor staff training (possibly both).

To make matters worse, even though these issues are caused by Qantas, the airline usually refuses to fix the problem after the fact.

In each of the cases highlighted above, the customers have spent hours and hours trying to call Qantas to get their flights reinstated, but the call centre repeatedly refused to do anything. Qantas customers are now resorting to going to the media or emailing the airline’s Chief Customer Officer directly to try to get basic customer service issues resolved. It should never have come to this. This is not normal, unsustainable and a terrible experience for everyone involved!

Australian Frequent Flyer requested comment from Qantas about this. A spokesperson told us that most people are not having these issues.

“We’ve seen millions of Classic Reward seats booked by our members since late last year, with only a small number of instances where there has been an error made by our contact centre staff which has impacted a customer’s reward seat booking,” the Qantas spokesperson said.

But Qantas does recognise that more training is needed for some of its offshore call centre workers.

“To ensure these errors don’t occur, we are upskilling our contact centre staff with a new training program that is specific to making and managing rewards bookings,” the spokesperson said.

We put it to Qantas that until this training program is completed, all calls relating to international Classic Flight Reward bookings should be directed to the Hobart call centre. Qantas did not specifically address our question about this.

A lack of Classic Flight Reward availability

While the failure of Qantas to ticket reward bookings is bad enough, there’s also the issue of finding Classic Flight Reward seats in the first place.

In this month’s Qantas Magazine, Alan Joyce said:

We’ve made millions more seats available for redemption across our entire domestic and international network and with our partners. We’ve made up to 50 per cent more reward seats available on international and popular domestic routes until the end of the year and released 2000 Points Planes, which have every seat available to book using points.
– Alan Joyce

Asked about the issue of reward flight availability, Qantas pointed us to their recent Points Planes initiatives and their promise to make up to 50% more Classic Reward seats available on Qantas flights until the end of 2022.

“There are still millions of reward seats available across domestic and international routes for the remainder of the year on Qantas, Jetstar and partner airlines. In addition, we have made thousands of entire flights available as “Points Planes” – where every seat, in every cabin is available as a Classic Reward Seat,” the Qantas spokesperson said.

“We remain committed to providing 50% more Classic Reward seat availability on Qantas’ international, trans-Tasman and popular domestic routes earlier this year [sic]”.

Indeed, Qantas has released Points Planes this year on various Australian regional routes and to New Caledonia. There were also a couple of promotional Points Planes to Rome when the new Perth-Rome flight went on sale. But we’ve barely seen a single reward seat available on any Qantas flight to Europe since then in a cabin other than Economy – and even Economy reward seats are nowhere to be seen on routes like Perth-Rome.

Finding Qantas award availability right now in Premium Economy, Business or First Class to destinations such as London, Rome, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok, Johannesburg, Santiago or Dallas is nearly impossible. Qantas just doesn’t even seem to be releasing premium cabin reward seats on popular international routes to its Gold, Platinum or Platinum One members right now – even in Economy, on some international routes. (Top-tier frequent flyers normally get first dibs up to 353 days out from departure.)

Qantas Business Class redemption seats are a little bit easier to find at the moment on routes like Sydney-Bengaluru, Melbourne-Delhi and Sydney-Jakarta, as well as on domestic and trans-Tasman flights. But many Qantas Frequent Flyer members collect points for “that dream trip” in a premium cabin to Europe or North America. That’s now looking more and more like a dream for Qantas Frequent Flyer members than reality.

The good news for Qantas Frequent Flyer members is that it’s also possible to redeem points with Qantas’ many partner airlines. This does open up more ways to redeem points.

But even award availability on partner airlines is becoming harder to find on popular routes, particularly during peak periods. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but as James Green from Frequent Flyer Solutions explained in last weekend’s AFF on Air podcast, things are now the worst he’s ever seen (other than during the pandemic when borders were firmly shut).

It also doesn’t help when Qatar Airways award seats suddenly vanish from the Qantas website. This happened almost two weeks ago, and most seats haven’t yet returned.

Emirates award availability to and from Australia has also dried up in recent months and is now almost non-existent. Searching for Classic Reward seats to Dubai on the Qantas website often now results in an error message.

How’s award availability for other frequent flyer programs?

Admittedly, it’s not only Qantas Frequent Flyer members facing a lack of award availability on popular routes at the moment. But this problem is not affecting members of Qantas’ rival loyalty programs nearly as badly when they try to redeem their points for flights to Asia or Europe.

For example, if you wanted to fly a family of four in Business Class from Melbourne to London next July, at the time of writing, you would have a wide choice of available flights through the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program:

But if you tried searching for four Classic Reward seats from Melbourne to London on the Qantas website, you’d probably find nothing at all in a premium cabin.

High taxes & carrier charges

Even if you can find award availability with Qantas points, other frequent flyer programs may offer much better value.

For example, Singapore Airlines charges 261,000 KrisFlyer miles and $296.08 in taxes per passenger for a round-trip Business Saver award booking from Sydney to Frankfurt.

You could also book the same seat using Virgin Australia Velocity points at a cost of 278,000 Velocity points + $296.08 in taxes. (Velocity will introduce carrier charges on Singapore Airlines reward seats in October, but this change hasn’t yet come into effect.)

Keep in mind that you can also transfer points from Velocity Frequent Flyer or any Australian credit card rewards program to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer!

By comparison, you would need to spend 318,000 Qantas points + $1,375.04 in taxes & carrier charges per passenger to fly with Qatar Airways from Sydney to Frankfurt and back. (In the example below we’ve used a return flight to Canberra because there were no Business reward seats available to book with Qantas points from Frankfurt to Sydney with Qatar Airways in the next year at the time of writing. But the cost is the same.)

If you were to redeem Qantas points to fly Emirates on the same route, a Business Classic Reward seat would cost 318,000 Qantas points and a whopping $3,605 in taxes & carrier charges per person! The taxes and charges alone on an Emirates redemption would roughly cover the cost of two round-trip Economy tickets!

Qantas doesn’t fly to Frankfurt (any more), but an equivalent round-trip redemption from Sydney to Rome in Qantas Business Class would cost 289,200 Qantas points + $944 in taxes & charges. This is a moot point, though, as Qantas almost never releases Classic Reward seats on this route.

Put simply, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer members have access to far more award seats to international destinations in premium cabins, for fewer points and with lower taxes & carrier charges. Who’s envious of whose frequent flyer program now? 😉

Qantas points are easy to earn, but what’s the point if you can’t use them?

Many Australians use the Qantas Frequent Flyer program by default as Qantas dominates the local market and Qantas points are so easy to earn in Australia. Qantas has proudly boasted that around 1 in 3 credit card transactions in Australia earns Qantas points and there are ways to earn Qantas points doing almost anything in Australia, from buying groceries at Woolworths to filling up at BP.

We’re not saying that Qantas points have no value. They absolutely do have value, and many Australian Frequent Flyer members will tell you that they’ve been able to redeem their points over the years for exciting trips or upgrades they could never have otherwise afforded.

It is still possible to redeem Qantas points for reward flights on many routes across the networks of Qantas, the Oneworld alliance and Qantas’ other partner airlines. If you’re lucky enough to find award availability, are able to make a booking and your booking is not arbitrarily cancelled, there’s a lot you can do with Qantas points.

But when Alan Joyce refers to Qantas points as being the “envy of the world”, perhaps he’s referring to how easy it is to earn them. Because, for the reasons outlined in this article, Qantas points definitely are not the most desirable currency to hold if you actually want to redeem them for an aspirational reward! (And no, Qantas, redeeming for toasters, gift cards or wine doesn’t count.)

As you would expect, Qantas rejected the claim that all of these issues diminished the value of Qantas points.

The Qantas Frequent Flyer business model relies on points being such an attractive proposition that consumers will change their behaviour to earn them. That’s why banks and retailers pay Qantas to offer Qantas points to their customers. But if Qantas wants people to keep earning points into the future – let alone lining up to buy extra Qantas points – they’ll need to sure make the points can actually be redeemed for valuable rewards. Otherwise, Qantas is effectively just printing worthless money.

There are so many better frequent flyer programs out there – Virgin Australia Velocity and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, to name just two – where members aren’t subject to the same frustrating experience when trying to redeem their points for a dream trip.

This has nothing to do with COVID-19, which has been Qantas’ go-to excuse for its customer service failures over the last two years. Many of the problems facing Qantas Frequent Flyer members at the moment are of Qantas’ own making and could be fixed if Qantas made an effort to do so.

Qantas Loyalty is the most profitable part of Qantas’ business. But the airline risks killing its golden goose as members find they can’t use their points as they had hoped, disengage with the Qantas Frequent Flyer program and ultimately switch their loyalty to an airline that reciprocates.

For Mr Joyce to call Qantas points “the envy of the world” in 2022 reeks of arrogance. Dissatisfied Qantas Frequent Flyer members have already started voting with their feet and wallets.

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 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.