Frequent Flyer Analysis: How much is 1 Qantas Frequent Flyer Point Worth?
Posted December 22nd, 2011 and last modified May 17th, 2013
Frequent flyer points have proved to be quite a successful promotion among airlines throughout the world in encouraging loyalty among their passengers. As long as happy customers are accumulating rewards points they feel obliged to remain with the airline and that is the whole idea. The more you can accumulate rewards points the better chance you have getting your next flight at a cheaper rate than the advertised ticket price. You can also buy gifts and home-ware products from various outlets at bargain prices. However, you must have asked yourself many times in the past, is it all worth while or is it just another con to make you feel obliged to remain with the one carrier? In fact have you ever wondered just how much a frequent flyer point is actually worth in real value terms.
There are many ways you can amass rewards points with the Qantas Frequent Flyer points program. You can earn points every time you make a purchase with certain credit cards. You can earn points by eating out at certain restaurants. You don’t need to purchase airline tickets with Qantas to earn frequent flyer points, you can successfully keep adding to your total as you go about your everyday living, so the question arises just how much are these points really worth?
The Value of Rewards Points is in What You Can do With Them
If you are diligently adding to your Qantas Frequent Flyer Rewards point score day after day dreaming of that free flight to the Whitsundays, you could be a little taken-a-back to realise that on most occasions the points you are earning are usually less than one cent in value. On some occasions they might be worth just one third of a cent. However the real test comes when you come to redeem the points and put them to good use. In this case your rewards points can assume a value of up to 1.3 cents when being used to book on a Qantas flight but if you want to make use of them in the Qantas online frequent flyer store their value will be more likely be around 0.3 of a cent each
This is why, when dealing with frequent flyer points, you must deal in thousands, preferably hundreds of thousands and this takes a mighty lot of dedicated spending. You will always get better deals when you redeem your points on airline tickets, as after all that is really what they are all about. You can basically forget about using them to buy gifts or home-ware products.
With this in mind you should look at the best way to redeem your Qantas Frequent Flyer Rewards points on Qantas airline tickets and this too can vary. With this in mind you could use them to your best advantage by redeeming them in the following ways:
- Any Seat Award is all about comfort. Its about upgrading from economy class to silver, gold or platinum. When you first join the Qantas Club you will start at bronze level from there you can upgrade to silver level, then gold level and onto the top level, platinum. Each increase in status gives you more benefits. Silver members can get seats up front with better leg room for example along with priority check-in privileges.
- Classic Award Domestic flights need a little thinking about. If you redeem your points in this way you could well find yourself blowing 16,000 rewards points on a flight between Melbourne and Sydney which could cost as little as $180. If you do your maths on this you will find the trip actually cost you 90 points for every dollar cost or 18 points per mile. Could look like a good enough deal for some, but there are better deals available.
- Classic Award International flights will give you a better return if you have enough points on hand. In this case you can fly from Melbourne to London for $1,615.00 of splurge 128,000 Qantas Frequent Flyer points. This works out at 80 points to the dollar or just six points a mile. When you make the comparison with the domestic flight, 18 points a mile, you can clearly see where the better value is.
- The thing about Classic Awards is that a business class seat is double the points required for an economy seat which makes it a bit of a bargain. As this would work out at 108 points per dollar, only 18 more points than a domestic economy flight. If you were to upgrade to a business class seat by paying hard cash it would cost you twice that of the economy fare. Therefore paying twice the number of points makes it great value.
If you have a sufficient number it would appear that the most economical way to use your Qantas Frequent Flyer points would be in upgrading to business class from economy, but this is only a comfort consideration and it might not mean a lot to many travellers. Whatever you do, the amount of points you will need to make any significant difference is quite huge, but this doesn’t mean worthwhile benefits are unachievable. If you can obtain a Platinum Qantas Frequent Flyer membership you will achieve double points on purchases for a start. This means if you spend freely earning Woolworths Everyday Rewards and generally buy where you can earn points you should be able to reap the rewards within a reasonable space of time.
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Can you tell the what the value in dollars would be for 250,000 points which was used for purchasing a ticket. Thanks Liz
ARE FREQUENT FLYER POINTS ABLE TO BE REDEEMED WHEN BOOKING THROUGH A TRAVEL AGENT ie HOTEL AND CAR HIRE
Hi Kathy. To clarify your question. So you have two types of rewards cards: one is a direct earn card (when you spend you earn frequent flyer points directly [Qantas, Virgin etc.]) and the other is a non-direct earn card (for instance you earn CBA rewards and you either transfer t if this makes sense. Jacob.