Why British Airways flyers may find the Qantas / Amex Membership Rewards tie-up useful

We ran two articles last week on Qantas Frequent Flyer joining UK American Express Membership Rewards as a transfer partner.

This article is an overview of Qantas Frequent Flyer and Membership Rewards, and this article looks at whether you should use Qantas Frequent Flyer points for EL AL or Emirates flights.

There are three other quirks of the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme which you might find interesting.  Even if you’d never considered opening an account with them before, here are three reasons to think about it:

Qantas Frequent Flyer lets children join without restrictions

British Airways Executive Club does NOT allow children to join, with one exception – if they are part of a Household Account.

For the majority of people, this isn’t a problem and they are happy to set up a Household Account.  This HfP article explains how British Airways Household Accounts work.

If you don’t want to be in a BA household account for some reason, you could open a Qantas Frequent Flyer account for your children and credit their BA and oneworld flights to that.

Qantas Frequent Flyer lets you fly on Emirates, Air France, KLM and EL AL and redeem the miles you earn on British Airways

If you have very occasional flights on Emirates, Air France, KLM or EL AL, you might not want to waste the miles by crediting to their own frequent flyer schemes.

You can credit Emirates, Air France, KLM and EL AL flights to a Qantas Frequent Flyer account and use the miles to redeem for British Airways flights.

This was always an option, of course, but it is now a more realistic one because you can easily top up your Qantas Frequent Flyer account using Amex Membership Rewards points to get to the total you need to redeem.

Qantas Frequent Flyer lets you transfer miles between members for FREE

This could be very interesting, although there are some restrictions.

British Airways has very hefty charges for transferring miles between accounts.  You can get around this by forming a Household Account to pool your miles but this is not always suitable.

Qantas allows FREE transfers between you and the following people:

• Husband / wife
• Parent / step-parent
• Domestic partner
• Child, including foster and stepchild
• Brother / sister
• Half brother / sister
• Grandparent
• Grandchild
• Son / daughter-in-law
• Brother / sister-in-law
• Father / mother-in-law
• Uncle / aunt
• Nephew / niece
• First cousin

You are not asked to prove your relationship when you make the transfer, although it does reserve the right to check.

What are the limits on Qantas Frequent Flyer points transfers?

The minimum transfer is 5,000 points per transfer.

You can make as many transfers as you like from your account, up to 600,000 points per year.

If you have a family member who is flying on a oneworld airline – and is likely to earn at least 5,000 miles – who you didn’t want in your BA Household Account, you could set them up with a Qantas Frequent Flyer account.  You could then transfer the points into YOUR Qantas account, top them up with Amex Membership Rewards points, and redeem for yourself.

This is also an option if you have any friends or family flying Emirates, KLM, Air France or EL AL who aren’t bothered about earning miles for their own use.

This is also a way of combining Membership Rewards points

It is not possible to transfers American Express Membership Rewards points to another person.  However, Qantas Frequent Flyer offers you a way of combining Membership Rewards pots for flight redemptions.

This is also an option for combining Membership Rewards points.  You could get someone else to move their American Express points into a Qantas account in their name and then move them across to your Qantas account.  You can combine them with your own Qantas balance, or top it up using your own Amex points, and then do a flight redemption.

You can learn more about points transfers – and initiate one – on this page of the Qantas website.

Conclusion

None of the ideas on this page are game changers.  However, they do show that the introduction of Qantas Frequent Flyer to Membership Rewards may have more upside than you intially thought.

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Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.