QANTAS new rule changes
 

New menber 1st post
Qantas has new rule changes posted on web site today 24-11-04.
one way and return awards
10 zones
points top up
and more

look forward to your coments

Here's the text from the summary page :

Useful 1st post

eeep... No more upgrade credits being issued from May

eeep...No more confirmable upgrades internationally, though this might actually be a boon for WPs since they will be v near the top of the list when the upgrades are issued on day of departure

eeep...Upgrade LHR-SYD = 96,000 points

One way awards = Good, price hike on awards = v bad ( e.g. LHR-SYD goes from 110 (Y)/137.5 (WT+)/220 (J)/270 (F) to 128/160/256/384

Comparing vs 3rd world awards, an economy award round trip to London will be 8000 points more than an AA member can snag a business class award and for the price of WT+ from QF, they can be luxuriating in the F cabin

Dave

Well, it seems as though everyone's suspicions were correct. The enhancements look as though it is QF that is the beneficiary most of the time.

The worst one has to be No guaranteed upgrades using points. You will only know if your upgrade has been successful when you check in. How this will be managed will be very interesting - how will the fare codes look? I suppose on the night before a flight, the system will see how many spare F or J seats there are on a flight and simply transition everyone on the points waitlist across on the basis of status then chronological order.

No upgrade of cheapo fares also seems to be a big loss. Combined with the above, it seems obvious that QF want to drive passengers to purchase higher margin fares.

How about the removal of upgrade credits? Extra zones? Too early in the morning to work out whether this is good or bad?

just did my first transfer.


upgrade credits may not be transferred to any other person,.
does that mean now or after 25th may.
comparing a few awards

The bus award syd-hnl is now 160k will be 144k
bus syd-lax- up from 160k to 192k
bus syd-sin up from 100k to 120k
first syd-lhr up from 300k to 384k
first syd-jfk up from 200k to 384k


first one world RTW up from 300k to 422.5k

thank godness I chose to stay with AA!

Of all of the changes , this is the most understandable imo. The number of seats in skybed business class has plummeted from 65 to 50 on the Kangaroo run and ( currently ) from 79 to 50 on the Pacific run. That's a lot of lost seats. IMO, there arent that many seats made available in advance and many (most?) requests end up being waitlisted anyway. Also, this will have some benefits since it would seem that all members will be able to request waitlisting from 90 days till 24 hours prior to departure.

Dave

I love this claim from the changes..

"From 25 May 2005, you will no longer earn Upgrade credits as many members found the Upgrade credit system confusing. Instead, for every 450 Status credits earned, we will award a Loyalty bonus of 5,000 Frequent Flyer points, in place of one Upgrade credit."

Aww, isnt that kind of them; those UCs were sooooo confusing. Far better to replace those complex beasts with nice simple 5000 points. Much rather have 25k points than an upgrade to Eggland... no really...I love the simplicity

Dave

But for those that dont understand upgrade credits its an improvement!

Points top-up quite expensive (4c per mile reducing to 2.8c @ 20,000), but may be better than a last minute run to top up for award.

This increases the effective award cost by a further 2,500 for awards unable to be booked online. :td:

Way to go Qantas! I'm sure they're going to p&*$ off a lot of PS/SG members with this.

This is what i've observed at first glance..

* Top-up points are being valued at approx. 2.8c/point to purchase, with a maximum of 15% of the award flight value to be made up of this (so 19500 points will cost $547.50).
* Whilst MEL-SYD in WHY will decrease from 20000 to 16000 and MEL-PER from 30000 to 26000, J class on the MEL-PER Run return will go from 45000 to 50000.
* And as stated, it's almost not even worth bothering about a J/F Redemption to LHR or even JFK for that matter.
* The Loyalty Bonus is a crock. They are further de-valuing the points you get for flying. There's only the SC program to keep people flying on them. Why fly to get Upgrade Credits when you can spend $5k on your credit card now?

Has anything good come out of this for a lowly PS like myself? I'm going to fall around 100SC's short of SG this year so looks like there's no longer any kind of real incentive to fly QF.

The only real benefit I can see here is the points transfer. It could be a nice present to someone who was a few thousand points short of a dream holiday :)

Drew

Give with one hand (removing charge for stopovers) and take away with other (extra charge for long/complex itin).

Reduction in status earning for longer haul, increase for some short flights. Are there any flights within Au/NZ over 2400 miles?

Upgrades
 

The biggest changes appear to be those related to upgrades.

I guess these may have been costing QANTAS heaps and they have done it in two stages.

The the only real change a year ago was a point cost increase for upgrades and an increase in the number of SC's needed to earn UC's.

This new change completes the task :td: .

Family Transfers
 

This is probably a sop to ease the pain.

However I'll be using it. Mrs Serfty is a QPNB, her 130,000 points are shortly going to decrease to 30,000 while my balance is going to increase by 100,000.

Sounds greedy, but as a SG I have greater reward availability ;) .