How to Renew Qantas Status with Points

Won’t be able to retain your Qantas Gold or Platinum status beyond your current membership year? Rather than booking an unnecessary trip to make up the extra status credits, you might simply be able to spend some of your Qantas Frequent Flyer points to extend your status.

Qantas proactively offers selected Gold and Platinum frequent flyers the option to pay for a 12-month status extension for fixed amounts of points. And even if you don’t receive an invitation, you may be able to request this directly.

This one-off offer isn’t available to everyone. Qantas only invites selected frequent flyers to renew their status with points, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be eligible for this offer.

But there is a chance. And if you’re quite a bit short of the status credits needed to retain your status tier, it could be a very good deal. Here’s how it works…

How many Qantas Points would you need to renew your status?

Eligible Gold frequent flyers can get a 12-month status extension for 80,000 Qantas Points. Gold frequent flyers normally need to earn at least 600 status credits during their membership year to renew their status.

A similar deal is available to some Qantas Platinum members. Instead of earning the usual 1,200 status credits to re-qualify for Platinum membership, Qantas may offer a renewal for 120,000 points.

If your Qantas Gold or Platinum membership is due to expire in the coming weeks, you may receive an email from Qantas Frequent Flyer. The email invites eligible members to call a dedicated phone number to learn more about their retention offer.

Not everyone is eligible for this offer

Even if you don’t receive an invitation, you may still be able to take up this offer by calling the Qantas Frequent Flyer Service Centre yourself. But, while it can’t hurt to ask, Qantas is under no obligation to sell you a status extension for points.

We don’t know exactly what criteria Qantas uses when deciding which Gold and Platinum members to contact. But we believe one of the criteria might be that you have already earned at least 50% of the usual required status credits during your current membership year to qualify for this offer.

It’s also possible that Qantas will only make this offer if you’ve already held your status continuously for several years.

You probably won’t receive this offer if you:

• Earned less than 50% of the status credits normally required for a renewal during your current membership year,
• Have not flown with Qantas or Jetstar at least four times this year,
• Have only held your status for 1-2 years so far, or
• Already used Qantas Points to renew your status in a previous year.

Some examples of offers received by AFF members

Several AFF members have reported receiving status renewal offers from Qantas. Here’s what some of them wrote on our forum:

I took the offer – which was 80,000 points [to renew Gold]. When I called up they tripled checked that I didn’t have any upcoming flights that would bring me over the 600 required.

Points were taken from my account about 24 hours after accepting the offer over the phone, with an email confirmation provided a couple days later. Status was updated almost immediately after the points were deducted.

Called this morning using the “dedicated” phone provided. The recorded greeting was something like “Welcome to QF, thanks for calling regarding your tier retention invitation”. After entering my details, I think I was put through to the Philippines… The person didn’t seemed to know the details but cutting the story short, the current offer is 120k pts to extend WP [Platinum] for 12mths.

One of the most recent examples is from exceladdict. This AFF member wrote a detailed post on our forum outlining how they successfully requested a Platinum status extension earlier this month for 120,000 Qantas Points.

There is a cooling-off period

If you decide to take up Qantas’ offer and spend 80,000 or 120,000 points to extend your status, you can still change your mind before your current membership year ends.

For example, if you were 120 status credits short of retaining Gold and paid the 80,000 points, but then ended up booking a last-minute trip that got you over the line to Gold in your own right, you could retract your acceptance of the status extension offer. You can also choose to simply let Qantas downgrade you and get a refund of your points. This option expires at the start of your next membership year.

Is it worth spending Qantas Points to retain status?

Spending points to retain your Qantas status could be very worthwhile if you’re well short of the status credits required. It’s also worth considering if you have more Qantas Points than you can use, or can easily earn the points back using credit card sign-up bonuses.

As well as lounge access, Qantas status gets you lots of useful benefits when flying with Qantas and other Oneworld alliance airlines.

On the other hand, 80,000 or 120,000 Qantas Points can get you a lot of award flights or upgrades! To put it into perspective, 152,200 Qantas Points (plus taxes & carrier charges) is enough to book an entire round-the-world trip on Oneworld airlines in Economy Class.

If you don’t plan to travel in the next year, this offer would also have limited value. That’s because you can only realise most of the value of airline status when you actually fly.

If you’re only a little short of the status credits you need to renew in your own right, you might find it better value to book a Qantas status run instead.

Don’t expect a complimentary Qantas status renewal

Until around 2018, Qantas used to sometimes offer complimentary status renewals to loyal frequent flyers on a case-by-case basis. The airline would reportedly consider the average number of status credits you’d earned over the past three years in deciding whether to “comp” your status for another year.

These complimentary status extensions ended around 2018 when Qantas first began selling status extensions for frequent flyer points. The cost in 2018 was the same as today – 80,000 Qantas Points for a Gold status renewal or 120,000 points for Platinum.

These offers were paused from early 2020 until June 2023. During that time, most frequent flyers were being given complimentary status extensions anyway.

If you don’t earn enough status credits to renew your Qantas status, and don’t take advantage of a renewal offer, you can expect to be downgraded by only one status tier. For example, if you currently have Gold status and don’t renew it, Qantas would downgrade you to Silver at the end of your membership year. This is due to what’s known as Qantas Frequent Flyer’s “soft landing” policy.