High-flying Qantas Frequent Flyer members are the target of the airline’s latest loyalty revamp. Having remained relatively untouched throughout the last decade, elite status tiers – which range from Silver all the way to Platinum One – will gradually undergo some changes in 2026.
Another major shift is that the Points Club and Green Tier programs will be axed. Many frequent travellers might find themselves better off after the dust has settled. But others may also find it more difficult to maintain their existing status tiers, particularly if they don’t live in Australia. Here’s our take.
What’s changing with status tiers?
1. Retaining status will become harder
Thankfully, Qantas is steering well away from a revenue-based status model. Nothing is changing about how passengers can earn Status Credits or attain new levels of status.
However, Qantas is doing away with the current lower thresholds to retain status. That means you will need to accrue the same number of Status Credits to earn or retain elite status in the future.
This won’t come into effect until late 2027, so there’s still plenty of time to retain your current status levels at existing rates.
| Qantas status tier | Status Credits to earn (unchanged) and retain (from late 2027) | Status Credits to retain (will be removed late 2027) |
|---|---|---|
| Silver | 300 SCs | 250 SCs |
| Gold | 700 SCs | 600 SCs |
| Platinum | 1,400 SCs | 1,200 SCs |
| Platinum One | 3,600 SCs (minimum 2,700 SCs on QF flights) | 3,600 SCs (minimum 2,700 SCs on QF flights) |
2. Removal of other status-related benefits
There are also other significant changes affecting Status Credits. For starters, Qantas is eliminating Loyalty Bonuses, which award 50 bonus Status Credits for every 500 Status Credits earned on Qantas and Jetstar flights – once again, this kicks in from late 2027.
And in what might be the biggest loss for regular (and high-spending) travellers, Qantas will shut down Points Club and Green Tier at the end of 2026. This will scrap the ability to earn Status Credits on Classic Flight Rewards, and for Points Club Plus members, the annual rollover of up to 100 Status Credits.
However, the airline has assured Point Hacks that current members will have their benefits grandfathered for some time, with more details to be revealed later.
New benefits for frequent flyers
With all the negative impacts out of the way, Qantas is also introducing a raft of new benefits, some of which are designed to offset or replace those that are being removed.
1. Status Credits on the ground are here to stay
Following a trial of promotion to earn Status Credits with ground-based partners, Qantas will now make this a permanent new avenue for members to boost their journey to higher tiers from late 2026.
As before, you’ll be able to unlock 10 or 20 bonus Status Credits in ten categories, just by earning at least 1,000 Qantas Points with those partners. A maximum of 140 Status Credits is up for grabs each membership year via this method.
2. All tiered members can rollover Status Credits
Replacing the Status Credits rollover for Points Club Plus members, all elite frequent flyers will soon be able to rollover 50% of any excess Status Credits after earning or maintaining a status level.
For example, a newly-minted Platinum member who earns 1,700 Status Credits in a year would have 300 excess Status Credits. From that, they’d start their new membership year with 150 Status Credits – a boost of almost 11% to their second-year retention journey.
However, a cap applies to how many Status Credits you can roll over:
- Silver: 100 SCs
- Gold: 350 SCs
- Platinum/Platinum One: 500 SCs
3. Lifetime Gold members will be able to bank Platinum
Aiming for Lifetime Silver or Gold? You can breathe a sigh of relief as the goalposts for Lifetime status levels aren’t changing. If you’re past that and are staring down the barrel of the very long journey to Lifetime Platinum, there’s a new range of incentives along the way – up to five years of Platinum status.
From early 2027, Lifetime Gold members will receive a ‘banked’ year of Platinum status, starting from 25,000 Status Credits. This can be activated at any time in the future, depending on your needs.
Further banked years of Platinum will be offered for every extra 10,000 Status Credits earned, up to 65,000. This mid-tier benefit will also apply retrospectively once it goes live, if you already have more than 25,000 lifetime Status Credits. Here’s a cheat sheet of how the Lifetime status journey looks.
| Lifetime status goal | Reward |
| 7,000 SCs | Lifetime Silver |
| 14,000 SCs | Lifetime Gold |
| 25,000 SCs | One banked year of Platinum |
| 35,000 SCs | One banked year of Platinum |
| 45,000 SCs | One banked year of Platinum |
| 55,000 SCs | One banked year of Platinum |
| 65,000 SCs | One banked year of Platinum |
| 75,000 SCs | Lifetime Platinum |
4. New benefits to some existing tiers
To round things out, Silver members can soon look forward to two complimentary lounge passes per year, instead of one. Qantas is also giving out hotel and wine vouchers to frequent flyers based on status, presumably to make up for the loss of those perks once Points Club vanishes.
Summing up
So there you have it. It’s a mixed bag of changes, but one that is skewed to benefit the higher echelons of frequent flyers, particularly those who qualify for status year after year.
With the introduction of the 50% status rollover and the ability to earn Status Credits on the ground, engaged members could overcome the deficit left by the removal of the lower requalification threshold and Loyalty Bonuses, as well as the Points Club Plus rollover.
But for those who are barely reaching the mark each year, it will become a tougher journey – especially those who live overseas and can’t complete many of the ‘on the ground’ opportunities.
Undoubtedly, the loss of the ability to earn Status Credits on Qantas Classic Flight Rewards will also be keenly felt. At least Qantas has told Point Hacks that it is looking at ways to bring this feature back in the future – possibly as a status benefit.
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Hi all,
Slightly irrelevant but I’m curious about the “gifts” we receive each year for achieving status (e.g. tag vs green tier leaf). Do we receive these each membership year that we achieve that tier, e.g. silver, or just the first time? I’m asking as I’ve just achieved Silver for the first time, and am curious whether retaining Silver next year will offer me the same choices. Apparently the qantas tags are being retired soon?
Per the article “However, the airline has assured Point Hacks that current members will have their benefits grandfathered for some time, with more details to be revealed later.” – This is key for many and no doubt Qantas has decided to see just how bad the backlash is to this new round of rip off’s before the announce the plan they have already obviously calculated.
“…Just book the cheapest, best fit flight and forget loyalty to a company that has forgotten loyalty to you.”
This.
I’m Australian and live in the US, current QF Gold and Points Club, and this about breaks even for me. I use the 4 flights a year requirement tactically to get home and visit family.
I can rarely fly QF Classic Rewards so losing the SC is ok. I earned SC on the ground even while away by using my QF Amex credit card, sending wine to my mum, and booking through QF Hotels (even wth the terrible interface – but all QF web interface is bad.) Green Tier had become unachievable while outside Australia so it’s fine if that goes.
If excess SC are allowed to roll over, then I can keep earning them by flying AA or AS First Class domestically in the US, which is much cheaper than QF AU business class, and racks up the SC quickly.
That being said, I am still contemplating moving all my FF activity to the Atmos Alaska/Hawaiian system in 2027, though I’ll lose the US domestic lounge benefit that’s one of the best things about QF Gold over here. I’ll see how this shakes out. And offering Silver an ‘extra’ lounge invitation is disingenous because it wasn’t that long ago Silver came with two automatically.
Well put, Emma. I’m a home-based Australian, and I travel to the US not frequently, but regularly enough for it to be significant. I value the QF programme for two things in particular, the relative ease, and hence low average cost per point to acquire them, even by purchase, and the benefits of status which, as you noted includes the US domestic lounge access denied to AA and AS members. I too have looked closely at Atmos as an alternative. AAdvantage just wouldn’t work.
The changes announced, on balance seem to break about even, and although there are some pain points, I think with some adaptation I’ll manage. Aiming for platinum, the lost SC opportunities outweigh those gained, at least as I see it. 140 SC on the ground when I’d need to jump through hoops I wouldn’t otherwise consider for some of them, is not compensation, nor are roll-overs when you have rarely in the past overqualified by much if at all. I’m on the cusp of life-time gold so at least that threshold is no longer relevant, but the advantages of Emerald over Sapphire, particularly with a non-US programme are not nothing. American Flagship check-in as a minor example.
I agree that with QF FF, AA and AS first are a good source of SC, 160 SC for a connecting west to east coast flight (AS via Seattle) next month. I’ve also done well with US domestic flights booked with QF points, available even when cash fares have been high. I’m still watching Atmos, but more for opportunities it offers than to up sticks from Qantas. Living there, obviously your decision process is different.
I just booked flights to Melbourne- Dubai – Venice, Istanbul – Dubai – Melbourne. When comparing Qantas and Emirates the price and experience were clearly better on Emirates (they’re QF flights operated by EK), so I booked directly with Emirates: literally the same flight, but cheaper and was able to book seats, whereas on Qantas I couldn’t.
After years of flying Qantas, my conclusion is that the entire “points exercise” is no longer worth the trouble unless you are very frequently flying for work or fortunate enough to afford a lot of discretionary personal travel, and can continue doing this over years.
If you go overseas once a year on holiday, and do three or four domestic work trips a year, there is no point in pursuing Qantas’ (or probably any) loyalty program. In my view, just book the cheapest, best fit flight and forget loyalty to a company that has forgotten loyalty to you.
So in summary – you get a points rollover as a positive
But lose with higher retention tier, no more points on classic rewards, 100 point PC+ rollover gone, loyalty bonuses gone, green tier 50SC gone
And then also lose the 50% points bonus on hotel bookings – which when combined with triple points deals made the horrible Qantas hotels UX worthwhile
As a loyal customer who buys business class international and lots of domestic , books hotels, has a Qantas credit card, links to utilities – I will be 300-400SC worse off and likely 100,000’s ff points worse off
Not sure what I did wrong …
I hear you loud and clear to all those ‘points’ you raised.
So losing points club and point club plus including the wine and accommodation vouchers that go with it. That is disappointing – doesn’t encourage loyalty for Qantas FF credit cards thats for sure. As a new lifetime Gold member the banked platinum idea looks good on paper but 10,000 status credits does take an eternity to earn and unlikely to achieve.
Exactly. Think about it kike this – the banked plat year is aimed at someone who isn’t actually getting plat each year, i.e. someone earning less than 1400 SCs. So let’s assume they’re doing as well as say 1000 a year. That’s 10 years before you’ll get a banked year of plat!! If you only get 500-700, it’s more 15-20 years… Absurd.
How does this impact with those who have the Qantas Titanium Credit cards?
Similarly those who earnt extra status credits through the Twice as Rewarding promotion, do they also qualify as rollover credits?
So losing Points Club means losing getting Status Credits via Classic Flight Rewards? Damn that sucks…
Ouch!
Losing the lower retain of 1200SC means earning 200 more, to make up for that with roll over I’d need to earn 400 more than that. So 1800SC instead of 1200SC.
Much worse off overall.
Going to make it very hard to maintain Platinum.
If you are a points plus member now as I am, then retain plat currently = 1200 – 100 rollover so 1100.
Under these changes, it will be 1400 to retain with no rollover. To get a rollover of 100, you need to earn 1600 which means retain will be 1300. Either way your 400 to 200 SCs worse off. It actually makes the rollover completely pointless!! Because you have to spend more to get it than you need duh.
Not all elite tiers can rollover. Platinum One is excluded.
Someone at Qantas confirmed verbally to us that it would apply to Platinum and Platinum One, but we will get that re-confirmed.