I have been a QF FF member since 1997. And dont get me wrong, I have had some great European and US trips on points, and churned cards with the best of them. Qatar Q-Suites to/from Europe, EK First Class from Barcelona, , QF business to NY, QF business to Asia, CX J class to and from Europe and many JC A380 sectors with EK before all the stupid fees. I have only ever used Classic Rewards, as they are branded now. The glory days really were 10-12 years ago when a JC fare between Eu and Oz was 128,000 points. And I made a lot of use of them. Availability was not easy, but not difficult either Fees were manageable.

And credit card churns combined with crafty purchasing bonuses meant each year was a business return to Europe for the two of us.

These days I have given up, and apart from the occassional KF reward flight, I buy my tickets with cash, and avoid Qantas

Am I alone, or is the whole game a waste of time now, unless you have your own business that can generate stupid amounts of points?

I found that the QF scheme plumeted over the years - I did enough travel a while back to get LT Gold , so there are benefits when I do travel on a OW airline, but the surcharges and points requirements make the scheme of little interest to me

Not only 128k r/t business class, but 1 upgrade credit per 250SCs earned were great for being able to upgrade trips - even the cost im miles for upgrades when they 1st came out for international travel were great value at 30k J-F and 50k Y-J --- and confirmable subject to award availability rather than an upgrade lottery

I tend to be ambivalent about which airline I travel with and choose the best airline for any particular trip and FF collection based on airline travelled

if u r looking to use with ur wife during xmas forget it

if u r like me, use for single travel where flexibility is available, and with WP or even P1 wonders, they are as good as cash

problem i have is i collect more points than i can burn them organically. I need to do set # of revenue ticket to make WP each year and family pooling (i got 4 to collect) its like each family trip earns enough for next.

yes its first world problem but i have not regretted a single day being with QF now LTG. if you are Mr Gold nobody forget it. make it to WP/P1 and u see new world open up

Interesting topic since I am at the very start of my career / adult life (so not the typical FT demographic) and I have come to the conclusion of going all in on QFF makes the most sense for me. It's one of the easier programs to hit OWS/OWE on, as even though I have been flying a lot of CX recently I get more SC value crediting to qff than to CX. My flights are mainly ex-per though, if I was based on the east coast of Australia it would be a different story since QF kneecaps partner SC earn rates on routes such as MEL/SYD-HKG on CX. Being Aus based also means that the "duopoly" of QF and Velocity point earning cards makes it an easy choice to pick QF due to the oneworld partnership - velocity is worthless to me. If QF wasn't in oneworld I'd probably just fly BFOD. And then finally, lifetime silver and gold are actually fairly easy to attain - fingers crossed they don't enhance these in the next few years.

Compared to the 'glory years', has the QF program declined more than other major airline programs? (eg SQ? CX? JL/NH? AC? UA? AA? BA? DL? LH? NZ?)

As a WP/P1 no.
As a LTG (or under), yes, particularly against AC, UA, AA and AS

I disagree - for example - redemption rate for UK-Australia using AA miles is 85k which is a bit worse than it used to be. QF redemption rate for UK-Australia has got a lot worse and has surchages applied

Regardless of colour of card, the value of points is significantly worse,

I do not compare the lesser of the evils.
I keep each FFP based on what I need and try not to have more miles/points than I can use in 18 months.
It works fairly well most of the time.

you have a point there about FF points devalue. Is this however just inflation or actual debasement of QF FF vs others is big question. For the most the ability to use them on high value J route is key and thats where status comes in to equation.

i often think of status benefit being deciding factors over the points. if purely how cheap the redemption is, i often hear likes of AA, Alaska, or even Avios being superior.

Think we're talking cross purposes Dave. I wrote that the AA and AS programs have held up well and depreciated far less than QF (i.e., QF is much worse than the glory days).

Given that the change in award cost on partners has not changed for quite a long while with AA, it is , I would say debasement of QF vs AA

If I wanted to redeem, say, on QF from SYD-CDG, it would cost 166,300 QF points plus taxes plus fares disguised as charges these days vs 85k plus tax using AA miles

Redemption wise, it doesn't ime make any difference for U class availability using AA miles vs QF points on the routes trying to find availability

Implicit in this statement is that the earn rates on QFF points v AA miles are similar. However, looking at SYD-CDG on QF33 in economy fare class S, a bronze member would earn 9,300 points (and 95SCs). On AA, it could be as little as 2630 miles.

On the counter - someone flying business class to LAX on AA or AA codeshare at $8000 would earn 40,000 AA miles vs 27,000 QF points

Or, should one choose to use a different airline to QF to London - BA earning for discount economy would be 2625 QF points or, I think, 2424 on MH
Collecting to AA would depend on pricd for BA - is price works out > USG525 , then AA earning would be higher - on MH at about 2670

There are routes where one will be better than the other for earning - it doesn't extrapolate out to all being better - it depends on travel undertaken

Qantas's 'fairer' system aims to penalise non QF travel

As a curiosity, what is the carrier surcharge on a business award SYD-LHR or LHR-SYD , since that also needs to be taken into consideration

There is no doubt the QF FF scheme has lost much of its appeal. Long time loyal users feel and see this the most. It's a sad day when senior tier FF's can no longer find a simple international classic redemption without extraordinary effort and time devoted to the task - and even then still failing to find anything suitable. Then we are told ad nauseam nothing has changed and in fact more classic reward seats are available than ever before. We all know, anecdotally at least, that's an outright lie.

Exactly this. The heyday of FF collection and redemptions are over. Much more limited availability, far more of the public using third party tools to find complex awards that used to require know how.

A decade ago I decided loyalty is a scam and I fly, revenue or awards, with whichever program or carrier I like. Many Australians are locked into QFF and will never know the joy of flying SQ, EY or other incredible products and carriers.

Or even if not incredible prodiucts - ones that can be as good but significantly better priced
e..g I just booked a PE journey SYD-LHR/CDG-SYD for $3310 against the $6376 that it would have cost on QF - even economy would have been $2450

Will renew SkyTeam Elite Plus from the trip too - credited to the appropriate scheme