Well this has come as a bit of a surprise. Qantas and Cathay Pacific have announced a codeshare deal, and will place their flight numbers on a small number of the services of each other.
Qantas will begin codesharing on selected Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon flights from October. In return Cathay Pacific will place its code on 13 routes on the Qantas Domestic network.
Qantas Codeshares
The deal will see Qantas place its code on 2 routes between Hong Kong and Australia, together with 10 routes within Asia from Hong Kong.
Under the codeshare, Qantas will begin codesharing on services from Hong Kong to Perth and Cairns. At this time, the codeshare does not extend to other Australia cities.
It will also see Qantas add its code to Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon’s services within Asia from Hong Kong to 10 cities across India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Vietnam
Cathay Pacific Codeshares
In return, Cathay Pacific will place its code on 13 routes on the Qantas Domestic network.
Those routes include flights on the golden triangle (i.e. between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane). Other routes include those between Sydney and Cairns and Alice Springs; between Melbourne and Canberra, Adelaide, Hobart and Cairns; plus between Brisbane and Cairns and Townsville; and on flights between Darwin and Perth.
Frequent Flyer Benefits
As both airlines are OneWorld members, there have long been benefits to frequent flyers on either airline. Offering codeshare services extend the opportunities to earn frequent flyer points through their respective loyalty programs.
Qantas Frequent Flyer members will earn more Qantas Points and status credits when travelling on the Qantas-coded flights.
To give an example of this, consider a business class journey from Perth to Hong Kong. At the moment, booking on the CX code, you would earn 120 Status Credits and 4,700 Qantas Points. If you instead book on the QF code, that could become 135 Status Credits and 8,750 Qantas Points.
In a similar fashion, Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Club members will earn more Club Points when travelling on a Cathay Pacific-coded flight. This opens opportunities for Marco Polo members to earn more on Australian domestic flights.
Tickets for the codeshare services will be available for sale from 22 October 2018, for travel from 28 October 2018.
Codeshare routes
Qantas codeshare on Cathay Pacific / Cathay Dragon routes:
Between Hong Kong and Australia
- Hong Kong – Cairns
- Hong Kong – Perth
Between Hong Kong and Asia
- Hong Kong – Bangalore, India
- Hong Kong – Mumbai, India
- Hong Kong – Calcutta, India
- Hong Kong – Delhi, India
- Hong Kong – Chennai, India
- Hong Kong – Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Hong Kong – Danang, Vietnam
- Hong Kong – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- Hong Kong – Hanoi, Vietnam
- Hong Kong – Yangon, Myanmar
Cathay Pacific codeshare on Qantas domestic routes:
- Adelaide-Melbourne
- Adelaide-Sydney
- Alice Springs-Sydney
- Brisbane-Cairns
- Brisbane-Melbourne
- Brisbane-Sydney
- Brisbane – Townsville
- Canberra-Melbourne
- Cairns-Melbourne
- Cairns-Sydney
- Darwin-Perth
- Hobart-Melbourne
- Melbourne-Sydney
