Yesterday, Qantas flagged that they were going to change status credit earnings when travelling on American Airlines marketed flights. The comment at the time did not quantify the changes, simply stating:
Qantas will adjust its Qantas Frequent Flyer policy with American Airlines to bring it in line with other oneworld carriers from 1 May 2017.
New Partner Earnings rates
Qantas has now updated its Partner Earnings tables to reflect the new earnings that will apply from May 1, 2017. The changes are not pretty – and show that the Status Credit earning rates on a number of American Airlines marketed flights will be halved from that time. In addition, some fare levels are being reclassified which will also have an earnings impact.
While the changes do not impact all flights on American Airlines, it significantly impacts those that it does. Broadly, it affects to sets of routes. Firstly, people travelling on AA coded flights between Australia and North America will see their credit earn rate halved. They will also see this on longer, primarily transcontinental routes, in North America.
Trans-Pacific
The first set of changes affects the status credit earnings when flying on the American Airlines between Australia and the US. The newly published tables show the effect on this
Qantas Partner Earning Trans-Pacific
North America
On routes within North America, the changes primarily affect trans-continental flying. The table below shows the changes
Qantas Partner Earning North America
Fare Classification changes
Qantas have also changed some of the classifications of individual fare buckets These changes may have an additional impact. There changes that take effect from May 1 are
- G,N and S class will be reclassified from Flexible Economy to Discount Economy
- H class will be reclassified from Flexible Economy to Economy
For affected travellers this represents a bit of a double whammy in the earning stakes. This change not only affects status credit earn, but also the number of points that will be earned on the affected flights.
Some things stay the same
While there are a number of changes there, not everything is changing. For example, on a number of the shorter sectors there is no change to Status Credit earn.
Summary
If you are flying on one of the affected routes, you can expect your Status Credit earn to be cut in half. In addition, depending on fare class, there may be an additional loss.
This may have an effect on which program you should credit any American marketed flight to, It is, however, an individual thing, and you should consider your own flying patterns to determine if you need to make changes.
