Qantas launches Classic Plus Flight Rewards; bookings now open

This is designed to trick less savvy travellers into burning more points without releasing more Classic Rewards seats, an approach Air NZ has been useing to deceive Kiwis for over a decade. 

Wonder how many SC's these will earn?

If anything this actually makes me less inclined to continue with QFF. Just let me book a classic reward seat on any flight, whenever I want. That's all we want. 

Unfortunately, Qantas' behaviour in recent years just means this change will be viewed cynically by most.  

QF claims that the number of Classic reward seats released won't be reduced.  This is a fairly meaningless promise given the exact number of FF seats actually made available is a closely guarded secret.  How will anyone outside the revenue section of QF actually know if this is being honoured or not?

I like having this option as a less frequent flyer it’s difficult to get the premium seats as a Classic Reward flight for long haul flights. I noticed I can only see them for a week or a few days until flying, which doesn’t suit me.

Recently I have ended up using points on business short haul and paying in cash for long haul. I guess I’m where Qantas wants me and one step away closer in the direction of using points for a toaster!

I would hope for the Gold and above getting the Classic Rewards is a bit easier.

This is effectively an increase in the cost of points redemptions - using a new name.

Any idea why taxes are more for award bookings?

“By way of example, a return business class fare from Sydney to London booked as a Classic Reward seat costs 289,200 points plus $1346 in tax.

In an off-peak time, that same trip as a Classic Plus could set you back 553,800 Points and $1696 in tax, or 638,900 plus the same in tax during a peak school holiday period. ”

Aimed squarely at the Points Club churners who fly little, but who have hundreds of thousands of points sitting there to be used for a once or twice a year flight in a premium cabin.

Hi David, thanks for being so quick with this story - a far better explanation than today's SMH. One thing though to your point around nabbing a sale fare - I'm not sure that the example provided shows this, or am I missing something?

"If you nab a sale fare though, you may end up paying less than a Classic Reward, as seen in this example between Sydney and Auckland:" 

My immediate reaction is one of mistrust. And it will stay this way until QF prove otherwise.

Agree with the all of you this is just another misleading and deceptive tactic by Qantas to deflect the real issue, which is not enough Classic Rewards seats. There are certainly other loyalty programmes out there that offer their frequent flyers far greater options for redemption. 

"...with Classic Rewards made available 353 days in advance, at the same time as Qantas releases Classic reward seats"

- I think there's a "plus" missing in there somewhere?

Just found BNE-LAX 'J' seats for 108K points, available most days.  Surely this is a positive move from QF?

I was at the launch this morning and the key to this is picking up fares during sales this is the only time this becomes reasonably viable. 

The points needed are still over double Krisflyer advantage rates. In comparison KF Saver to Europe from Australia is 130.5k/154K for advantage.  Qantas Classicis 144600 and 276900 for classic plus (though not on a sale fare for Feb 25 and it maybe less points when there is). Also the classic plus is based on a return fare. 

For one way given it is dynamic pricing it is 501,300 (for Feb 25). With Classic plus you can mix a classic and classic plus (for return). KF is still miles ahead in my opinion there also seems a lot more tickets available at the advantage level and the benefit of being able to wait list at either saver or advantage level. 

 Will have to wait and see what the points level are for the likes of LHR/LAX/JFK etc when there is a business sale. Most likely cheaper in Economy however that has never been the issue as there was classic rewards always around. 

Points+Pay rebranded to Classic Rewards+. Lipstick on a pig, and some marketing company got a big cash boost for coming up with this. 

Unimpressed - significantly more expensive seats therefore significantly less value.

Thought they could have done something for points club and particularly points club plus and increased SC earn to full rate using the classic plus option as this actually devalues the benefit considerably.

Alatar144 has hit the nail right on the head; all we want is to be able to book a reward seat on the flight we want.   This latest ‘more options’ is yet another complication designed to confuse FF travellers.  I have never, repeat NEVER, managed to use QFF points to get a seat on a Qantas flight.  BA, JAL and AA, yes but not Qantas. 

I predict the demise of the old Classic option in 1-2 years.  We'll be told something like it no longer suits the majority of customers.  Of course it won't, because the plan will be progessive withdrawal of available Classic seats.

What an absolute waste of Time by QANTAS.   QANTAS are trying to suck more points out of pople. They could  simply just make more CLASSIC Rewards availble, and then earn some customer respect.

In my opinion this just a Total CON Job. The Rewards program is sold as a REWARDS Program, however its just a trick to suck more miney from their customers.

As a GOLD Member I tried to find a CLASSIC Business CLAss SYD to SFO, every day for months, and eventually gace up.   I decided I wold rather pay another ariline

Qantas obviously cannot convert every seat into a low yielding classic reward as there will be no airline left at the end. Raising the price is the only sustainable way of increasing reward seats but of course nobody wants to pay more. In the end I still blame Qantas for carelessly issuing so many points over the years without the reward seat inventory behind it to soak it all up.

Generally agree with the sentiment that this is a fancy way to largely devalue points but to find something positive in this it does add a middle ground. With classic rewards tough work and point + pay and toaster redemption a valueless joke for only the greatest suckers, it does create capacity in the middle. Hear me out… on the earn side there is a world of people who are generating millions and millions of points through their small businesses and even if government services are at a small earn rate, they’re still cleaning up on lying taxes and general small business consumption. Their points balances in the millions of points is not the same effort to earn as my 10 years of earning as a P1 in a corporate role. So the small business guys with these huge balances may find this middle ground affordable. Sure it’s not classic rewards, and they’re playing a premium price for those free seats, but we can just hope it takes some of the demand for reward tickets out of the system so the average Joe / Jane with their woolies earned qantas points have a chance at that occasional special trip in J. Thats about all we can hope for. 

Out of the press release on qantas website this morning. 

TLDR: 1) this new reward revamp makes us a lot more money. 2) the cost has already been announced as part of our customer investment…. It’s about half of the commitment.

“ Financial update

The program changes are expected to deliver a substantial improvement in member engagement and will help drive the long-term growth of Qantas Loyalty as it continues to target $800 million – $1 billion Underlying EBIT by FY30.

The Classic Plus product represents approximately $120 million investment in FY25, excluding benefits from the program. This investment includes the value of displaced seat revenue in the airlines as well as the non-cash impact to fair value assumptions applied to future sale of points in the Loyalty Segment. The combined financial investment will be managed within the existing planned customer investment of $230 million for FY25.

Following the launch of the new product, Qantas Loyalty is now expected to deliver between $500 – $525 million Underlying EBIT in FY24 before returning to growth of ~10 per cent in Underlying EBIT in FY25.”

Has anyone noticed that over the past few months Qantas is changing the credit card reward points terms & conditions with all of the banks? They are basically eliminating the ability to redeem points from a reward card to your FF flyer account, forcing people to only be able to earn points directly onto "Business Rewards Accounts". This will prevent a lot of people from attaining "Points Club" or "Points Club Plus". This further diminishes the benefits for a lot of people for example the rollover of 100 status credits every year, and the earning of Stauts credits on Classic reward seats. 

So basically they are rebranding anytime points as classic plus? Lol, these point prices are completely ludicrous - why would you even bother doing anything to get points? It's so not worth it.

This measure is clearly to avoid having to change ratios for conversion of partner points. KF increased points required by 50% for most credit cards, Qantas has hung their profitability on selling points to financial institutions and retailers. This measure is so they can say the amount of points your customers get from us will not change. Cynical but likely to be swallowed. They probably also figured that the savvy would still be able to get Classic when they rarely pop up. It is incredibly cynical to say the amount of Classic across domestic and international won’t change. What we do know is the domestic flights with lots of spare seats will have heaps “available”, but no chance on Lord Howe for example. We have also been led up another path because they refused to commit to the same (or more) availability specifically on international seats. 

As with many recent Qantas ideas, this one will do nothing to improve their image and inevitably reduce the profitability of the frequent flier business as retailers hear back from customers that having a store of QFF points is not worth it. We might start seeing prices with and without QFF points. I bet heaps of people would prefer a discount. 

Great analysis.  I'm sorry, but when I (think) I finally got to understand this - it reminded me of John Hewson's proposed Value Added Tax from 1991, which was a good concept that eventually got up as the GST, but at the time was dreadfully sold in a far too complex way.  Astute 'Professional' Travellers, which 95% reading here are, will understand and move forward ' living with it'.  But I wonder how many others will be too suspicious and seek to 'abandon ship' to either Rex or Virdin?  No doubt some will, but I wonder if it'll be more than Ms Hudson anticipates?  Time will tell.  

More expensive and sub par standard by Qantas and qff

Krisflyer and Singapore Airlines is an easy win by a country mile for all international travel 

Don't forget Rex for InterCity flights.  Way cheaper than Qantas/Virgin, with excellent service.

I saw these headlines with excitement and that quickly faded when I logged in to search a few different random dates over the next 12 months. The points costs plus the cash component are just ridiculous! Seriously if you had the travel budget and partner spend to accumulate this level of points you would not need them. I save for years in my travel job to be able to treat my wife maybe every few years with a northern hemisphere trip and I really think I would be better off to just forget these so called loyalty programs and just search Skyscanner for the best deals at the time I want to travel, often significantly cheaper than QF and if Business Class you still get all the Platinum perks. It seems to me that the QANTAS model of REVENUE - REVENUE - REVENUE is a far more important strategy than loyalty. I remember the day that as a Platinum flyer if I arrive at a domestic airport early, you could get an earlier flight subject to seat availability, now you have to pay double the fare to get that chance if you happen to get to the airport early.  It really saddens me that the joys of leisure travel have become so outrageously expensive since the pandemic. I think it great the airlines are getting strong profitable returns now but I am getting better value from my points on the Qantas Store then flight redemption. Even a flight for my family to Cairns from Melbourne in August only offers Jetstar. I acknowledge it's tough for Qantas as is seems there are more people in the business lounges than the terminal these days and you can't please everyone. I'll keep searching as new dates come up and maybe one day I will find one of those original points redemptions flights.

"In an off-peak time, that same trip as a Classic Plus could set you back 553,800 Points and $1696 in tax".

So let's assume in an off peak time a return trip in economy costs circa $2k. So say 550,000 points = $2k of value here.

Current offers on Qantas wine, for 600,000 points I can buy 4 bottles of 2019 Penfolds Grange which retails for circa $980 a bottle minimum. Oh and that will massively go up in value and is an actual investment. So for 50,000 extra points you basically get double the value and no actual monetary outlay.

So in what universe is this good value? For the same amount of points and not much more than the cost of the taxes, you can get the return flight and $4,000 worth of wine which will increase in value as the years go by. 

Anyone who actually redeems points in this way needs to see a psychiatrist.

Qantas have an enormous liability on their balance sheet for points redemptions and this is designed to reduce that liability to increase their net assets, and by extension their market cap and share price.

To pretend it's anything else is extremely naive.

Our Qantas reward points have just suffered economic Hyper-inflation especially at times we wish to fly along with their, ah, ahem!! "Dynamic pricing"!! concept.

I can hear the bells tolling for Classic Rewards. Can you?

At the end of tody's SMH article about the rewards revamp is the comment " There are 16 million members to keep happy". So Qantas tinkers with award seats but at the same time increases the cost of extra legroom seats and (most infuriating of all) is going to charge for Row 4 within T-80. QF has a long way to go in learning how to make nice with FFs.

Interested to hear if anyone (in particular Perth based folk) have chucked in Qantas Frequent Flyer and headed down the Velocity path (and used SQ/QR etc for Intl trips) and 'not looked back'?  

Is there much difference in reward seat availability on the other side of the fence?

So glad we switched allegiance to Krisflyer. Qantas was never going to change for the better when the architect of so many of the worst actions in the Joyce era was actually Hudson.....

Seems like the end of classic rewards to me .

In a way, happy about it as I should have changed a another program years ago !

Other airlines eg SQ and UA offer a better premium experience for a lower price vs QF and you can ectually access their equivalent of QFF Classic rewards!

I’m at point that I will just burn my 1.2M points on Classic Plus just to be rid of them. After which I can finally cut the umbilical cord with QF and fly with them only if their offer is superior to other airlines. Which will probably mean no more QF International for me.

I’ve had a gutful QF.

I feel this is a massive devaluation of Qantas points. If you want to use them on qf flights in business you’re going to have to spend a lot more points. It’s clear they’re moving classic rewards to JQ only and have less and less availability on flights you’d actually want to spend them on. Perhaps using for upgrades on quiet flights is all that will be left. Disappointed but not surprised