Miner1

Have you heard the one about the guy who flys twice a year with Qantas to the UK and is P1 status?
Its true...2 return flights in J class and Platinum One is all yours with all its benefits for its highest frequent flyers including Platinum for the wife.
The rest of the year he flys with Virgin, in fact Im told that he averages 80+ domestic flights a year with Virgin. For his loyalty to Virgin he has Platinum status and rightly so.
I challenged this recently as since April 1st this year, I have had 54 Domestic flights and 2 International and I wanted to understand the real intent of the Qantas FF program and its rewards for those that spend more time in the air than on the ground.
Qantas marketing proudly promote “Platinum One status is reserved for our most frequent flyers and is designed to offer exceptional privileges for every journey.
As our way of saying 'thank you' for your loyalty and in recognition of your ongoing commitment to Qantas".
Based on my average, I will probably hit about 100 flights this year and will manage to retain Platinum. Am I Loyal, am I Frequent?
Wikipedia defines both the above and the reward of illustrious P1 status to the aforementioned loyal Virgin traveller based on these definations, just doent compute.
Qantas's explanation to me....I need to fly more or spend more to achieve P1 as it has nothing at all to do with Loyalty or Frequency. Huh???

The value of status is subtly eroding with the check in for Platinums and Business now shared across all Qantas club members and above.
Have you seen the increase in the queues at Premium boarding lanes now that Gold is considered Premium? In some instances the Premium queues are longer than the Economy queues.
Qantas, your program does not reward Frequency and it certainly does not reward loyalty so what does it reward?

Im interested to hear other travellers thoughts...

moa999

Welcome to Flyertalk Miner1.

Your maths is a bit off.

SYD-LHR earns 280SCs (310SC in Flex Business) so to retain Plat1 (3600SC with 2700SC on QF) you would need a minimum of 6 Business J returns - and probably spend of $50,000 with QF.
EVen in F you would need over 4 return trips.

Indeed until recently you could earn QF status with no QF flights at all (before the introduction of the 4 ~'s and a number of US/UK residents did this).
Platinum1 requires even more loyalty to Qantas with 2700 SC required to be earnt on Qantas.

--

Two return trips would renew Platinum status (1200 SC)
But 2x $8000 SYD-LHR J return = $16,000 spend
And thats pretty much equivalent to 120 x $140 SYD-MEL Red e-deals.

LTN Phobia

Welcome to Flyer Talk.

I think it is designed to reward spending a fair bit of money with QF frequently.

My main frequent flyer scheme is not QF (it's BA) but I do manage to retain Platinum, just not P1 for which I do not fly on QF often enough or spend enough with them to attain.

I do not think many (any?) frequent flyer schemes are designed to reward people flying on the lowest fares very frequently (apart from those who do so extremely frequently - 100 flights/year is a fair bit but not 'extremely frequently' to my mind - if you end up with 270 x 10SC QF flights, you'll get close to getting P1!). They money isn't really there in the lowest fare bucket. On the other hand if you took 100 domestic flights a year in Flex Saver, then you get pretty close unless every flight is in the shortest distance range.

og

How many times have you seen the non priority line begin boarding before the staff member gets to the priority boarding scanner? The Priority line is just a way to make you think you are important. I have never seen any non Gold or Plats evicted from the priority line. The lines mean nothing. So long as I can be on the plane early enough to easily stuff the carry-ons in the overhead, then I'm happy.

SuiteFlight

Sad but true og - priority boarding line is a bit of a joke with Qantas (at least the domestic one, International tends to be better).

Princess fiona

Ok QF states that you must earn 3600 SC in your membership year and of those 2700SC must be on QF flight numbers.
If you didn't achieve this then you don't get P1. Doesn't mean you aren't Loyal or Frequent but you don't get P1. Welcome to my world and also to Flyertalk.
Typo in the title it's "debacle" no "r" in it.

SuiteFlight

I'm not convinced myself that P1 is worth striving for anyway (I was just shy last year, for example), although I guess considering how awful even the Platinum Qantas Call Centre line has gotten lately perhaps that P1 help desk is getting more valuable (assuming it's not also suffering from the recent changes).

There are very few airlines left where loyalty and frequency of travel actually return much to the traveller these days (it's mostly a one-way street in the airline's favour these days ).

martin33

first thought is why are you ever in a checkin queue at all for domestic trips?

agree they've never been great at domestic priority boarding

but let's not encourage the notion that there's a clutch of potentially light-traveling longhaul P1's sipping champagne in the private Lounge and laughing at mere Plat status. [That group would be the Chairman's Circle, no?]

3600SC (75% on QF) is quite a high hurdle no matter how one flies.

LTN Phobia

It's the 2700 SCs on QF that's a bar to me at the moment.

I have sadly been rather put off by QF-operated international flights due to poor seats and catering in J on shorter long haul flights and actively avoiding them, even though I'd have more than qualified for P1 had I been flying QF. (I don't fly on EK as I have no interest in transiting via DXB, so EK-operated QF-coded flights aren't an option for me either.) QF baggage allowances for both hand luggage and checked baggage are often problematic for me too.

Thankfully they have much improved the seats on many A330s (I do like those seats) so things are looking up. I hope other aircraft types will have the same seats eventually, and then I'll be able to get back to flying on QF. In addition, I do hope they have improved the catering in J on those shorter long haul flights.

og

If you don't eat in the lounge, you'll be hungry in flight. I'm sure the QF bean counters have figured it's cheaper to put out a few extra salad items in the lounge than adequately stock the meal carts on board.

SuiteFlight

The P1 vs CL treatment is direct evidence that frequency and value of travel paid isn't generally the key driver in Qantas' providing of favour.

Many CLs do not get near P1 travel levels (CLs are split into two groupings - standard CLs and CLP1, generally CLP1s get priority over all although there are still high economic or social value base CLs who get put above them).

Ultimately it all comes down to what Qantas thinks you are worth to them, either in money or influence. Actual travel done is a very distant second (but at least this is a pretty transparent part of the Qantas loyalty schemes). It can be very byzantine when you start moving beyond the basic elements of Qantas "status", and Qantas don't like shedding light on these special loyalty thresholds.

There are lots of lovely benefits if you are at the top of the tree though, such as having the Qantas Airport Duty Manager escorting you, plenty of operational upgrades (even two-class upgrades are not uncommon), very personalised and immediate disruptions assistance, and lots of freebies and invites and other goodies [I know this as I was on the personal staff of one of these special ones, and as I travelled with him I got to see first hand how well they got treated].

You are, however, talking about the 1% of the 1% - mere mortals will never have it so good... Poor P1s have to slum it in the Domestic Business Lounges and Qantas International First Lounges like us mere Platinums, with little more than token extras occasionally. They might travel multiple times more than most CLs, but they are certainly their poor cousins (and as for the uber CLs, they are third class Indian rail travellers in comparison).

Best just to not worry about it.

Beano

To the airline nothing is more important than the decision maker within the company
The annual travel budget of even a medium size corporation is many many times what a frequent traveller does and the airlines also know the frequent traveller is mostly dictated by the company.

SuiteFlight

To get CL you usually have to be a critical decision maker in the top end of the Australian business scene - SMEs don't get a look in from what I know. The top level of the public service (and the ADF), the top level of politics, and senior judges fill out most CL spots. The luckier ones tend to be "personalities" (not all personalities are loaded) - who, except for the Hollywood stars and the big Australian TV presenters, would otherwise never see the inside of a CL - largess (and a bit of pro quid pro) is often the story here.

If you are a travel contract controller in an SME, you are more likely to get invites to Qantas functions and lunches rather than CL membership. It's a decent number of people, but not a large amount of people, with CL.

NZbutterfly

IMHO FFPs aren't about customers at all. They're about beating out the other competing airlines because that affects their bank statements. Take NZ for example...reportedly one of the worst FFPs. Apart from a bit of JQ and small airlines like sun air, air chathams there isn't really any competition. So if you want to fly somewhere then you're going NZ anyway, so they can afford to offer less to the FF. If air NZ was the only airline in NZ then why would you offer anything at all?? They have to offer something though as their international routes take them into competing regions (barring the North American routes...for now).

Customers count ... To a lesser degree. Air NZ offers EP1 category above elite but from rumours these go to head honchos of massive corporations (I assume they or their company members fly lots). Of course you want to make an effort for the big fish. I'm elite...but I'm well aware that I'm small fry in the overall big picture. If I left the programme because I wasn't happy with a xmas gift or a call centre outcome then.....why on earth would they care??? If elites were leaving in droves and it was affecting the books.....then I'd expect NZ to start evaluating why and institute changes accordingly. Not everyone prioritises the FFP highly either...hard product on the TT route is for me, then pricing, then schedule. FFP factors in later. I think the key factor is... It needs to affect the books or be predicted to affect the books before significant changes are made.

Australia has 2 major players with smaller airlines and the other airlines eg EK SQ...too many to name, so there's more competition so QF etc need to improve their FFP to a level that's competitive on an international front and to a different level on the domestic front. I'm sure they make changes according to their bank statements and depending on what the competitor offers also.

Customers are just pawns in the game. The guy who spends more, affects their books more. Frequency doesn't come into it.

It's like retail shopping at xmas.....loads of shops offer specials. You'd lose out to the competition as a shop owner if you didn't.

Apologies for the NZ bias in the answer but I think the answer isn't airline specific. My 2 cents worth anyway.

Dave Noble

QF doesn't seem to think it needs to improve its programme. It has done a sterling job of changing it from a great programme in 2001 to the dismal scheme it is now