As CO Insider and Wx4caster tipped off in another thread, the awards for Qantas are changing, in which reward travel for travel to Down Under will become significantly more expensive.

While the specifics haven't been unveiled yet (and some have speculated the new awards would be 120k,160k, and 220k respectively, up from the 80k,105k,135k levels they're at now for economy/business/first travel), I'm curious what the dynamics are for these changes.

Qantas dumped US (or vice versa) earlier, which also had similar award offerings to CO's.... and I'm not sure if it was a cost issue or availability issue.

With talk of CO's 787's possibly serving Australia, I wonder how much of a threat Qantas perceives carriers other than AA which it partners with.

With their A380's coming online soon, I hope we'll be able to snag an award or two from their new First Class product before they're either priced prohibitively...or dropped entirely as a CO partner.