Qantas Frequent Flyer hits $10 billion valuation
The Flying Kangaroo’s loyalty program is now rated among the ten most valuable in the world.
By David Flynn, April 7 2026
Qantas’ frequent flyer program is now soaring among the world’s ten most valuable airline rewards schemes, scoring a US$7 billion (A$10.1 billion) valuation from independent specialist firm On Point Loyalty.
Qantas Frequent Flyer ranked #9 in On Point Loyalty’s assessment of more than 170 airlines worldwide.
The program, which has over 18 million members and issues more than 200 billion Qantas Points a year, reported $2.86 billion in revenue in the 2025 financial year and tipped some $556 million into the Qantas coffers.
On Point Loyalty’s leaderboard predictably shows three US carriers – Delta, American and United – at the top, with a staggering combined valuation of A$121 billion across their SkyMiles, AAdvantage and MileagePlus platforms.
British behemoth IAG saw its Avios program – used by British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling – valued at A$15 billion, with the Lufthansa Group’s shared Miles & More program at A$12.6 billion.
Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer sits not far behind Qantas, with a valuation of A$8 billion, with Cathay Pacific’s eponymous Cathay scheme at A$7.7 billion.
Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer is parked at #29, with a valuation of $2.58 billion against its 12 million members.
From marketing tools to money-making machines
On Point’s loyalty ladder is produced by combining publicly available data with On Point Loyalty's proprietary insights and valuation models, which take into account airline operational and financial performance; loyalty program attractiveness, structure and economics; and country-level macroeconomic and regulatory factors.
Once viewed primarily as marketing tools, airline loyalty programs have evolved into core financial assets whose “predictable cashflows makes them uniquely valuable within an otherwise cyclical industry,” says On Point Loyalty, an advisory firm specialising in loyalty strategy and program economics.
“Their combination of recurring revenues, strong margins, and scalable partner ecosystems makes them uniquely positioned within an industry often characterised by volatility.”
Case in point: during the global pandemic, the Qantas Loyalty division – of which Qantas Frequent Flyer is the central plank – was the only part of the entire airline to turn a profit, at $333 million across 2020-2021.
This arguably proves the wisdom of Qantas’ decision not to offload its frequent flyer program in 2013, during a tumultuous period when the airline was dramatically downgraded to a "junk" credit rating due to intense competition, weak earnings and high debt.
At the time, the program was valued at a tempting $2.4 billion, but “after careful consideration, our judgment was that Qantas Loyalty continued to offer major profitable growth opportunities, and there was insufficient justification” for a sale, reflected then-CEO Alan Joyce in 2014.
Qantas now sees its loyalty arm as earning between $800 million and $1 billion per year by 2030 – numbers never imagined when the frequent flyer program was launched almost 40 years ago, in 1987.
