Qantas is gifting its Frequent Flyers up to 1,800 Status Credits. The gift comes as part of a range of initiatives to rewards its members.
Qantas has previously offered its members a one-year extension. This new program offers its members additional Status support. In addition, Qantas are offering improved award availability and additional ways of earning Status Credits.
In this post, I will take a look at the Status support offers. Other posts will take a look at other aspects of this announcement.
Status Credit Boost
Firstly, let’s look at one of the big ones. A status credit gift to all Status members. Qantas Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Platinum One members will receive a gift of 50% of the annual status credits required to renew their status.
Status Credit Boost amounts
As mentioned, Qantas will be providing a Status Credit gift based on their current status. Based on providing half of the status credits you need to renew status, the gifts are as follows:
- Silver: 125 status credits
- Gold: 300 status credits
- Platinum: 600 status credits
- Platinum One: 1,800 status credits
The gift will be in your account based on your membership year. For members that have the membership year ending between March and June may find that they have already received the gift. If you haven’t received the status credits yet, they may not be far away.
For members that have a membership year between July 2020 and February 2021, you will already have been advised of a status extension. In addition, you will now be awarded a status credit gift on the first day of your new membership year.
For example, say that you are Platinum, and your membership year is October. You will likely have already had your Platinum status extended until October 2022. Now, you will also receive 600 Status Credits on November 1.
Status Support
Status Support is an additional gift of status credits to some members. In particular, it applies to members that have had limited opportunity to use their extended status. For example, members that had their status extended in March have already had four months of limited ability to regains their status.
To help remedy this, Qantas will offer members with membership years between March and August an additional monthly bonus. This Status Bonus will be applied to members accounts each month in their new year, through to September.
So, if you had your extension in March, you will receive a bonus for each month from April through to September. On the other hand, if your year comes up in August, you will receive just the one bonus for September.
The number of points awarded each month is based on your status. They are awarded as follows:
- Silver: 5 status credits per month
- Gold: 15 status credits per month
- Platinum: 50 status credits per month
- Platinum One: 150 status credits per month
The way Qantas has calculated these numbers doesn’t look that obvious. It does appear they are giving higher status members more of a hand toward retaining their status.
Platinum One Members
Qantas has also relaxed a few rules to assist Platinum One members. In particular, any Loyalty Bonus they receive this year will apply to renew their Platinum One status. Not a big change, but something that may help out a bit.
Thoughts
This is a good initiative from Qantas. While the one-year extension was good, it has become clear that travel is not going to be returning to normal any time soon. As a result, the normal ways of renewing status weren’t going to ‘fly’.
It is not impossible that they may need to do something more down the track, but this should keep Qantas Frequent Flyers happy for a little while.