RichardMEL, truly a masterful comparison and I (along with others I'm sure) appreciate your indepth analysis. Whilst on the surface (skim reading) it appears to hold up (given the assumptions), I like the thadocta will probably mull it over and test your hypotheses.

Of course, one of the main assumptions is that flights are based on exactly the same situations. This will probably match the majority of people who will use this comparison to judge which FF program is better.

I may be very different to others here, I hardly ever do pure return flights, my flights are multi-city and mostly K (or above) based fares. So I would think that if I crunched the numbers on that basis (post 1 July assuming a clean slate like you did), I would think QF will win hands down.

I'm probably back in MEL next week (as an example, I'll do BNE/MEL/CBR/SYD/BNE on this trip in K), I'll let you and others know, maybe we can chew the fat over this contentious issue over another beer...