LHR/MEL/Europe FF

in fairness the table might have changed. I recall someone saying 'U' class did not earn after 1 July. QF may have since updated the table.

serfty

As far as I can tell, the table appeared by Saturday - there was quite a lot of AFF posting in regard to the topic.

Red Roo replied several times on AFF about earning after June but took some prompting to be specific.

perthite

I think it was there before then, drron certainly referred to the table several times on the Friday.

serfty

May have been Friday evening it appeared - while ddron seemed happy, his initial posts on that had no reference to the table that I recall.

I may go back and check. (Also, being right at the bottom of the page and below the other listed airlines it may have easily been missed by many, including myself.)

Platy

A couple of points.

Firstly, by removing marginal ASAs, ASAs, are no longer ASAs. I mean with the change you can no longer access any seat.

The U class seat (like any other) was assigned a value - that value was latched to the points (at a minimum the same as a classic award) with additional points and/or cash to make up the assigned value by QF.

Remove U class seats - you can no longer claim to be able to access any seat.

This was no loop hole (as some have claimed).

Secondly, and perhaps, more importantly (I can't see anyone else making this point on a quick scan through the posts), the marginal ASA was one of the few (if not the main) point of differentiation between QF and VA schemes. Obviously VA offers differences which QF doesn't (family pooling being the most obvious): strip away the marginal ASAs and QF has lost the most significant point of difference between the two schemes in its favour.

IF the executive/management at QF had half a brain cell between them they would be promoting their points of differentiation. This is product marketing and marketing 101 people.

Facile arguments about whether marginal ASAs were loop holes of not really don't make any sense - it's a side issue that misses the point and demonstrates how petty debate has become over the reactionary (non) strategies of a desperately incompetent leadership team at QF HQ.

QF needs to keep its premium customers loyal at a time of intense competition.

It should be identifying, harnessing, and promoting its best assets, its points of differentiation to this end, not disenfranchising customers.

Dave Noble

I disagree. Any seat does not imply access to the standard award inventory, just that any seat for sale can be booked. That non revenue classes were allowed to be booked at often significantly lower points costs than those in revenue classes does come across as a loophole and one that I am quite pleased to see addressed

I don't see that those attaining status on the cheap by using these are really premium passengers that Qantas should be working on

perthite

I did ask a Virgin staffer over drinks once if they would ever consider offering their equivalent of a MASA. The response was that their calculations were that Qantas must have been losing money on them, and they weren't going to go down that path

I guess there is no real benefit in having a point of differentiation that loses you money. I guess one could argue over whether they lose money or not, but, at the end of the day, Qantas has chosen to withdraw them....

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

I guess that's the issue... it was a free seat anyway - they couldn't sell it so they were offering it as an award.

and then you paid a bundle ($$) to get SCs and points. Exactly like jetstar. If they were losing money it couldn't have been very much?

Given award seats used to be free, just taxes, and now we have to pay fuel surcharges... I don't see how Qantas would have lost anything.

Platy

By your logic QF should not be offering double status credits to woo passengers into heightened status on the cheap. But they do. And (until someone can work out how they choose their targets for such promotions) their assignment of double status credit offers appears to be random.

Nor, in that case, should QF offer discretionary status upgrades for those that fail to attain the threshold points at the end of their membership year.

The reason QF offers such promotions is as a marketing tool to promote customer loyalty, notably in the face of double point and double status offers from VA.

So QF is not averse to offering routes to cheap(er) status when it suits itself (even if one could argue more intelligence in its marketing strategy would offer better value).

And upon consideration I don't think that QF's main issue was being able to attain the status "cheaper": I think it's a straight revenue issue: if marginal ASAs were showing (on the former booking system) to be available at a lesser rate than the more expensive fare buckets, business could be diverted away from those more expensive fares to a cheaper fare - why pay 200,000 pts for a seat when you can get it for 36,000 plus cash.

And many seem to think that marginal ASAs were priced at the same price as a classic award. Well they weren't. Just one example, I did a CNS-BNE-PER-BME return for 72,000 pts plus about $800 cash component - considerably more than the classic award equivalent.

Now of course even the classic award is many more points since the changeover to the booking system resulted in calculating points component on distance travelled combining all sectors not the start to destination direct distance.

Since I am one of those loyal QF travellers who has used marginal ASAs on occasions I must presume you think I am indeed one of travellers that QF shouldn't be working on, especially since I used the BME trip to tip my status credit balance over from the low 3000s to just over the 3600 threshold for P1.

Shame on me. Despite my 20 years of loyalty to the airline, many of which at Platinum level I'm clearly not someone worthy of their concern, because I have used marginal ASAs.

But in fact the opposite is true. Since I can no longer "translate" points into status by using my points, time and money to do a marginal ASA to tip myself into Platinum or P1, in my eyes the whole QF FF is greatly diminished.

The lower rate of point earn on QF, the higher rate of point burn on QF, the excessive fuel surcharges on award flights (even on those carriers which don't charge fuel surcharges like AA) on QF awards, simply means that without the marginal ASAs, I get far better value by diverting my loyalty to VA domestically and whatever airline internationally offers the best value.

QF has devalued its scheme to such an extent that I am driven to alternatives.

And (unlike you) I don't think QF gives a flying rats....

Dave Noble

Except that it didn't really cost 72k points since would have earned 18,666 points back from the trip, so cost was only 53,334 points

Looking at that route , there would be $145 in taxes and charges, making the additional cost in money to be $655

On a purchase points value, Qantas charges 18,000 points at $520.

This then earned 400SCs which is a sigbificant proportion of the requirements for renewal and no need to pay the $3900 that a revenue flight to earn those points would cost or the cost in points that a real ASA would have cost

RichardMEL

Platty I see your point regarding "Any Seat" NOT being available if specific buckets (eg: U) are taken out, but I must side with Dave Noble on this one - and it seems VA did it right from the start.

To me, award/upgrade inventory is totally seperate (or should be) from revenue inventory, though obviously award/upgrade inventory would be considered by RM when allocating inventory on any one flight. I mean if you have 2 seats left in Y, you're hardly going to make 1 to an award seat and 1 to a revenue seat (but I digress).

For a long time UA had what seemed to be a complicated way of managing this, but it also made sense. They had seperate inventory for both award and upgrade, they used to call it like XC and NC (from memory) for award/upgrade in C (business) class. QF still uses U for both.

Perhaps really the issue is that "Any Seat" award should be interpreted as "Any Revenue Seat" award - since you can't purchase a U class seat (or X or whatever) on a flight.

So really I think perhaps the idea is that ASA's were supposed to be, to put it *simply* (that's a nod to QF ) "Any seat available for SALE on a flight you can purchase with points"

Again, I've been the only one to use the word "loophole" to describe what was going on with the award classes being used for ASA's - I still contend that it is a form of loophole, or as someone else (serty I think) put it "Unintended Consequences"

I still have no issue with QF closing this.

perthite

I don't know that it was a loophole, or unintended consequence. They specifically opened up earning on the relevant fare classes, when booked as an ASA. It was something that they decided was worthwhile at the time.

Blackcloud

IIRC ASA when first introduced did not earn SC or QFFP. I would speculate that after a rather unsuccessful launch and negative feedback QF decided to make them more attractive by introducing SC and QFFP earn. They knew what they were doing the could have limited earn on fare classes such as they did on JQ some fare codes but they chose not to.

perthite

I think the introduction reflected the way things were at the time. They had just moved to direct earn cards, introduced a bunch of partners, so needed to help folk move their points. The market conditions and Qantas itself are in different positions to where they were a few years back.

Platy

Although we disagree (on whether a loophole or not) the fact remains that such opportunity is being closed down by QF.

In a way it does me a great favour.

I am no longer tempted to hoard QF points because:

1) of their increased value as both a reward enabler and status enabler
2) to have a cache ready when needed to bump up status credits via the marginal ASA channel

Ironically, QF have made things "simpler" to the extent that I can merrily spend my backlog of 750,000 pts without hesitation.

They have also increased opportunity to spend the points in that now I will use them for classic awards on non QF metal/flight codes, opening up far more possibilities.

BUT the downside for QF is that they have made me far less loyal and will much less business from me. This is because:

1) I don't place any additional value on QF points due to their status credit earn potential
2) with QF points thus devalued (and given the low earn rate and high burn rate plus fuel surcharges) points in other FFs schemes that I would have previously not even have considered now become very attractive (read VA for domestic, transfer to SQ from Amex not QF, etc).
3) now there is increased risk of being stranded short of a Platinum or Platinum One threshold, I am far less likely to even bother chasing QF Platinum/Platinum One status given I am already a Lifetime Gold
4) there is far less overall opportunity to earn points (assumed but not announced yet) and credits if I have need/desire to fly on another OneWorld carrier

When these ASAs were stripped out of the booking engine last year it was clear that the writing was on the wall so I have used the last 9 months to diversify my whole approach to FF loyalty where now 70% of my near 2 million points lie with FF schemes other than QF - a complete reversal from 70% with QF last June.

Case in point - looking into a business trip to UAE. Client will pay business fare. Best option seems to be on Etihad with the complimentary upgrade into first through Amex travel. The miles/credits can book to VA or AA. A year ago I would unthinkingly have simply booked the QF flights and tried to use my QFF points to upgrade.