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Qantas Frequent Flyer is now a UK American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner

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With no fanfare at all, Qantas Frequent Flyer has apppeared this morning as a UK American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner.

The transfer rate is 1:1.

The minimum transfer is 500 points.

The quoted transfer time is 3 business days.

If you have an existing Qantas Frequent Flyer account, this should be an easy way of stopping points from expiring.

This is a very short article because I don’t know the slightest thing about Qantas Frequent Flyer.  However, here is the key – Qantas is, of course, a member of the oneworld alliance.  This means that you can redeem Qantas Frequent Flyer points for flights on British Airways.

I have absolutely no idea:

how many points such redemptions require

what sort of taxes and charges are required

what the cancellation rules are

whether you need to book return tickets

whether you can book open jaw tickets etc

…. so I can’t tell you at the moment whether it’s better than transferring to British Airways Executive Club.  I also don’t know what non-oneworld partners are available, except for the well publicised Emirates and KLM joint ventures.

In general, though, Qantas Frequent Flyer does not have a great reputation and I don’t expect a lot of sweet spots to appear.

I also don’t know generous the scheme is if you credit future British Airways flights to Qantas Frequent Flyer instead of BAEC.  As Amex now offers you an easy way of topping up your flight miles to the exact level you need for a reward, this might be an option for some people. 

It is especially interesting if you have already retained your British Airways status and have flexibility about where you credit future flights in your membership year.

I’ll do some digging over the next few days.

You can see the Membership Rewards UK airline partners on the Amex website here.

You can find out more about Qantas Frequent Flyer on the Qantas site here.

PS.  Aer Lingus AerClub seems to have disappeared as a partner, not that it matters since you can move points from BA or Iberia

PPS.   Can someone please tell Amex how to spell “Singapore KrysFlyer” properly?!  Perhaps change the Qantas headline to ‘Qantas Frequent Flyer’ and not ‘Qantas Point Transfer’ too …..

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Category

American Express Membership Rewards, oneworld alliance partners

Comments (34)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • marcw says:
    22 Jun22 June 13:17

    Qantas Flyer is great to search for OW availability.

    Otherwise it is an “interesting program”, especially for travelling east, as you can earn + burn miles/points on BA, IB, AF, KLM, JAL, Malaysian, Finnair, Qatar, Emirates and of course, Qantas.

    Both the aero + burn are non-attractive (IMHO).

    • Lady London says:
      22 Jun22 June 21:14

      was that earn/burn on AF/KLM for QF points? hmmmm wondering if there is anything worth looking into about AF/KL points being able to be used on QF as well as VS. If so, I suspect far, far too many points are wanted. But still…

  • Jason says:
    22 Jun22 June 13:30

    Qantas FF scheme has been been very good value to me personally (maybe because I live in Australia so the scheme makes more sense to me), lots of ways to earn points from day to day spending (credit card, online shopping, even household utilities), and in the past two years I have been able to redeem my points quite easily for business class seats on various routes multiple times between Australia, Taiwan and Japan, on both Qantas flights and partner airlines such as China Airlines and Japan Airlines.

  • John says:
    22 Jun22 June 14:20

    I think QFF should be valued versus Avios at $1 to £1. So if you value an Avios at 1p you should value 1 QFF at 1 Australian cent. As I value Avios at 0.6p I value QFF at 0.6 cents.

  • DB2020 says:
    22 Jun22 June 17:42

    KrisFlyer
    😊

  • Lyn says:
    22 Jun22 June 20:17

    As others have said, Qantas FF is more useful if you live in Australia, but this is a way to top up to keep miles from expiring (after 18 months) if you are already a member in the UK.

    One niche aspect of the Qantas programme that might be worth mentioning is the ability to earn Lifetime Ruby and Sapphire OW status, which is not available in BAEC.

    I started using Qantas FF many years ago almost by accident because it was the only way at the time to earn miles and “tier points” in the same programme when flying on both BA and AA as well as Qantas. Reaching Lifetime Ruby (Qantas silver), and now working towards Lifetime Sapphire (Qantas gold) has kept me loyal so far. I just manage to squeak by and requalify for Sapphire each year, although this is by no means easy travelling in economy and not living in Australia!

    • ECR says:
      22 Jun22 June 21:21

      The 4 QF coded flights required per year for status are tricky from the UK unless you after flying to or via Singapore or Australia each year.

      • Lyn says:
        22 Jun22 June 22:33

        Very true. I meant to include that in my comment.

        As I said, this is niche. I imagine the only appeal for earning lifetime status could be for someone with lots of long-haul business/first travel in excess of their requirement for maintaining BA Gold but not enough to be able to reach lifetime BA Gold. Or perhaps someone who already has quite a lot of Qantas status credits (equivalent to tier points) from past travel. Qantas tend to have very occasional, very brief promotions for double status credits, but I think these only apply to QF flights.

    • John says:
      23 Jun23 June 10:14

      Exactly. Perfect timing. I had a few thousand points expiring at the end of the month without being able to stop it from expiring (I don’t live in Australia, so it’s tricky). I used ebay before, but it takes ages for it to be credited to Qantas.

      Today, I added my Qantas account to Amex, transferred 500 points and the transfer went through immediately.

      Et voilá, my points are now extended 🙂

  • Alan says:
    22 Jun22 June 22:12

    Fantastic news! I’ve got 160k QF from my year in Oz and it was always tricky finding ways to extend the validity – most recently signing up for Hoyts Rewards did the trick!

    One of the most interesting parts of this is being able to use Qantas points to redeem on Emirates – would be worth comparing the relative costs.

  • SydneySwan says:
    23 Jun23 June 06:48

    Don’t get too excited about the QFF program. It is notorious for frequent ‘énhancements’. Also unlike BA there is no guaranteed 4 Y / 2 J award seats per flight and this makes redemptions very problematic.

  • ANDREW MACKIE says:
    23 Jun23 June 10:14

    If it’s any help I buy a cheap Chinese item on ebay.au using the portal on the Qantas FF shopping site to keep my membership valid … 1 point per AUD spent … as with ebay.uk usually free P+P .

    • John says:
      23 Jun23 June 10:16

      I’ve done the same, but it takes ages (from weeks to months) to be credited. It’s a good strategy if you are not in a rush!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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