Qantas Frequent Flyer

Qantas Frequent Flyer program

An unoriginal name but at least you know what you are joining.

I joined this program just before we left for our Australia and New Zealand trip as we were going to be flying with Qantas and doing several internal flights as well. I am a member of KLM/Air France Flying Blue as well as we use these airlines most of the time. The flight to Australia and back is obviously quite long o you do amass ...
...worth it.

Qantas is an extremely reliable airline and I have flown several times with them when I lived in Australia but had not flown with them recently so had not bothered about the frequent flyer programme before.

HOW TO JOIN :
Signing up was extremely simple on their website www.qantas.com.au. There is a link near the top of the page for 'frequent flyer program' and you click on this. The website is simply set ... more

Qantas Frequent Flyer program

An unoriginal name but at least you know what you are joining.

I joined this program just before we left for our Australia and New Zealand trip as we were going to be flying with Qantas and doing several internal flights as well. I am a member of KLM/Air France Flying Blue as well as we use these airlines most of the time. The flight to Australia and back is obviously quite long o you do amass quite a few miles in one return trip so it is worth it.

Qantas is an extremely reliable airline and I have flown several times with them when I lived in Australia but had not flown with them recently so had not bothered about the frequent flyer programme before.

HOW TO JOIN :
Signing up was extremely simple on their website www.qantas.com.au. There is a link near the top of the page for 'frequent flyer program' and you click on this. The website is simply set out with the Qantas red and white colours and logo at the top, links under this and then other information for booing flights etc under this.

Once I had filled in all my details it came to a section for payment… wait a minute I thought - I'm not paying to join and I backtracked, however it seems to be free to join in the UK so I'm not sure why others have to pay. I was just relieved I did not have to.
I guessed they would send a card at some time but this did not seem to be the case as it is now April and I joined in January and still haven't had a card. My only record is the bit of paper I wrote my membership number and pin down on to keep in my personal filing cabinet in the 'travel' section. I can login and update information and when travelling I carry a piece of paper with my number and my husband's number on it. Having said that the Airline had a record of us as frequent flyers on EVERY flight we did on the trip so they are efficient with their records.

WHAT DO YOU EARN?
On our trip we flew:
Manchester - H'row - Singapore - Perth
Perth - Darwin
Darwin - Alice springs
Alice Springs- cairns
Cairns - Sydney
Adelaide - Auckland
Christchurch - Sydney - Singapore - H'row - Manchester
I'm not sure how many miles that is in ral flying terms but I earned 28,972 miles with the frequent flyer programme.

WHAT DO THESE MILES MEAN?

Flights:
The important stuff now; I've looked on he website and have discovered that I can fly from Heathrow to Stockholm, Copenhagen or Nice return with these points in economy. I was quite impressed s this is a free bonus. I had already paid for the Australia trip and this came free - not too bad for nothing.

Qantas Frequent Flyer gift Store:
This is part of the website in the Frequent Flyer section. You can spend your points in here if you do not want to explore the world further. The possibilities range from
Travel, Travel Accessories, Vouchers gifts and wine, Technology & Business, Home & Lifestyle, entertainment & Music, Sports & outdoors, Health & beauty.

I looked at Entertainment & Music. First I clicked on books but thee was nothing there! I tried Music and an iTunes voucher for $50 Aus cost 7250 frequent flyer miles.
I then looked at Health and Beauty in fragrances and these ranged from 8400 ff miles for Intimately Beckham Him 50ml to Burberry the Beat 75ml for 16600 ff miles and there were about 30 different fragrances offered. The next item I clicked on was Home and Lifestyle and I looked at coffee machines and found a choice of 14 different types. These ranged in ff miles from 24500ff miles for a Tefal Espremio Espresso and cappuccino Machine to 216,000 ff miles (I could NOT this with the miles I have at present but I could fly to Stockholm and back) Gaggia Automatic Espresso Machine.
There were many other options but it would be boring for me and especially so for you to continue the journey into other ways for me to spend my lovely Frequent Flyer points.
Oh dear - as I look closer I think I can only spend my FF miles in this wonderful store if I live in NZ or Australia - just as well I want to use mine for world exploration on board Qantas at a future date I guess.

Other option for point spending:
Travel vouchers- this I copied from the wbsite - "Use your points to redeem a range of travel vouchers from Qantas Holidays and other travel partners. Hotel and Car Rental Awards for Australian and New Zealand members can now be purchased as vouchers from the Qantas Frequent Flyer Store."

Jetstar - which is Qantas's partner for domestic flights is also an option as from website again "you can use points to book any available seat on any domestic or international Jetstar flight with a JQ flight number with Jetstar Any Seat Awards. Plus for most seats you can use Points Plus Pay."

HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH OTHER FRQUENT FLYER PROGRAMMES
I am a member of Flying Blue and I collect Airmiles. Flying Blue seems to compare quite similarly with the collection of points for flights/miles flown. I have flown about the same number of miles with KLM/Air France and have about the same number of frequent flyer miles which again will take me about the same distance (possibly slightly further with flying Blue than with Qantas).
Airmiles are hard to compare as I collect these from places other than flying, in fact I do not get any Airmiles directly from an Airline. My Airmiles are collected by booking my flights through Airmiles thus I collect twice! But that is another review and I do not want any 'Off Topic' rates.

IN SUMMARY:

If you are planning to fly to Australia or New Zealand using Qantas then I would join because as you can see you can fly somewhere in Europe for nothing when you return. It's a bit like buy one and you get a second much smaller one FREE.
I'm certainly not complaining as it is a FREE extra. I doubt that I will ever reach the dizzy heights of silver level at any Frequent Flyer programmes I think it is only regular business flyers who get to that level. I am quite happy getting a little something for nothing by joining these programmes. I think he rick is not to join too many and try to fly with your Frequent Flyer airline if that is a financial and viable option. Obviously if it was going to cost a lot more to fly with KLM or Qantas I would choose another airline but if the prices were about the same then I choose one of my FF Airlines.
 

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