My husband is currently a Skywards Gold member and has a small balance of 80k points. He is flying business this year twice (Africa and Nepal) on Emirates as per company preference.
What I have noticed is the value of points he earns on skywards vs Qantas returns. Also noticed that some if his points expire sooner. Should we switch to Qantas ff for his work trips and use his small skywards balance for a trip to NZ so that they are not wasted?
As a family we are saving our points for a trip to Japan and have a Qantas balance of 135k. Sadly he doesn’t have gold status on Qantas. If we did decide to switch the earning on these flights would we ask the company to book via Qantas onto the Emirates flight?
Or should we just stick to Emirates since we already have a balance and gold status?
My understanding would be that if you hold Skywards Gold, then you would be treated the same as a QF Gold. And whilst I am not familiar with Skywards program, I find it hard to comprehend that the points will expire if your husband is still earning (as in flying EK, and crediting those points to Skywards)? In most FF programs, if not all, points will only expire if there has been no activity for a set period of time. Like I said though, I am not familiar with Skywards.
You mentioned that your husband had a balance of 80K Skywards points. With two J class return trips, I would assume this balance would jump up significantly. However, you mentioned that your end goal is a family trip to Japan. EK may not be the best option for trying to fly Australia to Japan using points - I am not aware of any EK flight to Japan that departs from Australia. So Qantas may be the better option there.
There are more qualified people on this site who may be able to help. But thats my understanding.
Not very familiar with Skywards too so if you can’t seem to find award seats on their website, you may have to call them to ask and redeem.
With partner or alliance airlines, you could credit revenue (paid with cash) flights to any partner or alliance airlines of your choosing. E.g. If you book directly and fly Emirates, you could credit you flight to earn status and or miles with Qantas.
However, since your partner is already a Skywards Gold, it may be more efficient to just continue to maintain that instead of starting from scratch with Qantas.
It really depends what airlines you intend to fly with in the near future-> which airline’s status would do you the most good.