Over the last 9mths I have accrued 450,000 Qantas Frequent Flyer Pts. I am 25pts away from being a Silver Status.
I am disappointed after so much effort with the QFF program. It is very difficult to get award seats, and even when you can, its costs a lot of points.
I mainly travel to Tokyo, Bangkok/Phuket, Bali, USA. Tokyo once every 18mths. Bangkok/Phuket once a year, and Bali twice a year. USA once every 18mths.
My aim is to travel to the above destinations in a flat bed and enjoy my flight experiences.
Have I joined the right FF program? Would it have been better to be with Virgin? Or possibly kept my accrued pts with a flexible program like Amex? I am a novice at this and the more I read the more I am confused.
Hi there,\r\n\r\nTo be perfectly honest velocity will leave you with the exact same issue; reward seats on long haul flights to popular destinations in business class are always in high demand, so they go quickly when they’re available.\r\n\r\nQantas is generally acknowledged to have pretty poor availability in premium cabins on most long haul routes, and unfortunately the only way to improve your chances of being able to spend points easily is to hold status. Gold and platinum members with qantas benefit from improved award availability, so depending on your situation if you were to pay for one or two more of your trips overseas a year in premium economy or business with cash and then go up in status, you’d find that getting seats in business using points on your other trips will become significantly easier.\r\n\r\nW-hiew is absolutely right though - try booking as far in advance as you can. Seats go on sale about 11 months out from your travel date, and with qff especially, generally once that initial allocation of reward seats is gone it’s not often that many more drop in later down the line.\r\n\r\nI guess the Amex has the benefit of more transfer partners, so you’d be able to search availability through all the airlines and then transfer your points to whichever program had the best availability for the seats you needed case by case.
My only advice is to book early if you are struggling to find award seats. Try 11/12 mths in advance.
My personal order of preference is AmEx MR points>Qantas points>Velocity points for international redemptions.
Everyone is different.
You can try looking for award seats for the same dates and destinations on Velocity as when you look on Qantas. I would be most pleasantly surprised if you could find better availability on Velocity.
Also in case you aren’t aware of this, use Classic Reward search on Qantas and on Velocity, aim for Reward seats not anytime seats.
My experience is QFF is better than Velocity when it comes to long haul availability. QF isn’t great, but Velocity is terrible.
When it comes to upgrading flights, I like VA’s approach better to Qantas’ as there is a ‘slight’ chance you can upgrade early. So, as advised already, book early and check daily.
Both programs are good and I’d say Velocity is slightly better. But QF are better domestically than VA (IMO - but I truly value both airlines). So choose the airline you like to fly with and commit to that program.