Qantas Gold Status Or Equivalent - How Much Did You Spend?

Hi All,

Im aiming for Gold Status this year with Qantas or Similar programs and wanted to know nifty ways of reaching this status with the least amount of money spent to reach it.

How much did you end up spending to reach the 700 status credits needed for Gold Status or equivalent on an airline? Or have you reached gold on another airline (American or V.Australia) and then did a status match to Qantas? (How much did you end up spending & what ways have you increased your chances of reaching this status).

Please exclude (double status promotions) in this. I know there very useful however I want to have an understanding of other helpful ways to reach this goal with the least amount of money spent :)

(please note. I usually travel 6-7x a year overseas in economy to (HKG/SIN/JAPAN) and I in the past I haven't bothered with trying to reach any status however I was thinking it would be nice to reach this in the new year since I'm more or less traveling every 2nd month.

Benjie.

Fly indirect. SYD-MEL-HKG or SYD-BNE-HKG will get you more SC than flying direct. Similarly for flying to SIN and for some domestic routes e.g. SYD-BNE-CNS. It should cost about the same and may even be cheaper due to the popularity of international flights to/from SYD.

Without DSC (you really should try to take advantage of this) doing 3 day trips MEL-BNE-CNS return in J would get SG but you can do better on a long/convoluted route with many flight segments.

OneWorld RTW can be an attractive option. Sometimes a OW airline has a sale on RTW trips and if they don’t codeshare with QF on QF operated legs all the better.

Did 2 flights with a mix of QF operated and EK oeprated with QF flight numbers australia east coast to EU.

1x Economy Discount = 140 SC

1x Business Discount = 560 SC

Total cost was around 5700aud. However, I did get a bit lucky as I bought the flights during a sale, at the moment the same flights would cost closer to 7500aud.

With those trips (Sin, HK and Japan 6-7 times) you regularly take you can do it (120-150 SCs on each trip) but make sure you purchase higher value tickets (avoid sale tickets) and fully flexible if you can. You can work it out by doing dummy bookings on the QF website. As others have said the more stops the better.

Calculate the $ cost per status credit when you are comparing fares. Without double status promotions, the best you can get on Qantas would generally be around $7 per status credit. At $7 per status credit it will cost you $4,900 to achieve Gold. This should give you an idea of the cost of achieving Gold status.

Over the past 3 years, with me at QF SG, could/would be at least aud$6500/Aud$7000 per year or so, but that was with EK flights with a QF code, flights of which we all know has now stopped, (all but stopped, excepting SYD - CHC).

Others would have been able to get it cheaper, but my flights were only Au domestic, and Au - NZ only.

If you want to earn max QF status credits, you have to fly either QF planes, only or EK planes with QF flight numbers, these 2 carry the most QF SC.

If you fly BA/CX/AA/QR, these will earn you QF SC, but at a lower rate of earn.

If you want to get to the US, have to use QF to earn the most, or if wanting to get to the UK, have to fly QF via SIN or EK with a QF flight number via DXB.

Ouch just calculated my Gold renewal cost on 100% Qantaslink regional flights: