Qantas Frequent Flyer Guide: Make the Most of Your Qantas Miles
This article was last updated Sep 26, 2019. Terms and conditions may have changed. For the most accurate information, please consult the issuer website.
When you’re a frequent traveler, it only makes sense that you investigate all opportunities to leverage rewards. If you regularly fly Qantas Airways, you might not want to ignore the Qantas Frequent Flyer Program. Qantas redemptions can offer good to great value on some Jetstar routes, and Qantas offers a round-the-world booking option with up to five stopovers permitted. Here’s what you need to know about Qantas Frequent Flyer.
In this article:
- What airlines can you book with Qantas Frequent Flyer points?
- Credit cards that belong to oneworld alliance members
- Where to search for rewards
- Rewards charts: How much do rewards cost?
- Rewards change and booking fees
- Options when you can’t find reward space
- Best reward values: Where to get the most from your miles
- Upgrades: How much do they cost?
- Stopover options
- Routing rules: How to piece together rewards across continents
- Alternative miles to book Qantas flights
- Hotel points that you can convert to Qantas
- Transferring miles to someone else
- Expiring miles: How to avoid losing them
What airlines can you book with Qantas Frequent Flyer points?
The oneworld alliance is a collaboration of 13 airlines. Qantas Frequent Flyer points can be used to book reward flights with all oneworld partners:
- American Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific
- Finnair
- Iberia
- Japan Airlines
- LATAM
- Malaysia Airlines
- Qantas Airlines
- Qatar Airways
- Royal Jordanian Airlines
- S7 Airlines
- SriLankan Airlines
In addition, Qantas partners with other airlines that are not part of the oneworld alliance, including:
- Air New Zealand
- Jetstar
- Alaska Airlines
- Emirates
- Aer Niugini
- Air Vanuatu
- airnorth
- China Eastern
- El Al
- Fiji Airways
- WestJet
Credit cards that belong to oneworld alliance members
Since Qantas is a member of the oneworld Alliance, you can earn points that can be used to book Qantas flights as well as flights with other airline partners using certain travel-related credit cards. The following credit cards let you earn points that can be used with oneworld Alliance members.
- AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard®
- American Airlines AAdvantage MileUp℠ Card
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
- Chase Sapphire Reserve®
- Citi Prestige® Credit Card
- British Airways Visa Signature® Card
- The Platinum Card® from American Express
Where to search for rewards
Qantas offers one of the better reward search engines for oneworld flights. Most partners do show up on Qantas’ reward search engine. If a partner doesn’t show up in the search engine, you can contact the partner directly. If you want to use Qantas points to book an reward flight, we recommend first running your search on Qantas.com. If you don’t see flights that work for you, it is time to try searching for your flights segment-by-segment.
For example, if you want to fly from New York (JFK) to Prague (PRG) via London (LHR), you can run one search for reward flights from JFK-LHR and another search for flights from PRG to LHR. If you find flight options that work for both flights, you should be able to book them together as part of the same reward. If you can’t find anything, it’s possible that flights are not available for your desired dates and airports.
If you call into Qantas to find out about reward space or you need to search for space on a different website, you will also ultimately need to call to book that reward.
Reward charts: How much do rewards cost?
The easiest way to determine how much a Qantas reward costs is by using its points calculator. Qantas offers four different reward charts:
- Qantas classic flight rewards: For flights on Qantas and selected single individual partners
- oneworld classic flight rewards: For flights that combine at least two oneworld carriers other than Qantas. These rewards cannot combine partners that aren’t in oneworld.
- Partner classic flight rewards: For rewards on an individual partner.
- Jetstar classic flight rewards: For rewards on the budget carrier Jetstar.
Here are a few sample one-way price points for popular routes:
Route Economy Premium Economy Business First
Sydney-Los Angeles 41,900 81,300 108,400 162,800
Sydney-Dallas 51,200 94,900 126,500 189,800
Sydney-Tokyo (Haneda) 31,500 61,500 82,000 N/A
Sydney-Brisbane 8,000 N/A 18,400 N/A
Below are the full reward charts. Note that the appropriate chart depends on the airline or airlines being flown.
Qantas Classic Flight reward Chart for bookings on Qantas, Jetstar, Airnorth, Fiji Airways, Air Vanuatu, American Airlines and Emirates.
For bookings created on or after Sept. 18, 2019:
Zone One-Way Mileage Economy Premium Economy Business First
1 0-600 8,000 13,800 18,400 27,600
2 601-1,200 12,000 20,600 27,600 41,500
3 1,201-2,400 18,000 31,000 41,500 62,200
4 2,401-3,600 20,300 42,200 57,000 85,500
5 3,601-4,800 25,200 51,300 68,400 102,600
6 4,801-5,800 31,500 61,500 82,000 123,100
7 5,801-7,000 37,600 71,100 94,900 142,300
8 7,001-8,400 41,900 81,300 108,400 162,800
9 8,401-9,600 51,200 94,900 126,500 189,800
10 9,601-15,000 55,200 108,400 144,600 216,900
Jetstar Classic Flight reward Chart for bookings on Jetstar, Jetstar Asia, Jetstar Japan and Jetstar Pacific (flights cannot be used with any airlines from the above chart).
For bookings created on or after Sept. 18, 2019:
Zone One-Way Mileage Economy Business
1 0-600 6,400 13,800
2 601-1,200 9,600 20,600
3 1,201-2,400 14,400 31,000
4 2,401-3,600 18,000 42,200
5 3,601-4,800 21,500 51,300
6 4,801-5,800 26,000 61,500
7 5,801-7,000 32,000 71,100
8 7,001-8,400 35,600 81,300
9 8,401-9,600 43,500 94,900
10 9,601-15,000 46,900 108,400
Partner Classic Flight reward chart for flights on Air Niugini, Alaska Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific/Cathay Dragon, China Airlines, China Eastern, El Al, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LATAM, Malaysia Airlines, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian, S7 Airlines and SriLankan Airlines.
For bookings created on or after Sept. 18, 2019:
Zone One-Way Mileage Economy Premium Economy Business First
1 0-600 10,000 15,800 20,000 29,000
2 601-1,200 14,000 23,700 30,000 43,500
3 1,201-2,400 20,000 34,500 43,800 64,500
4 2,401-3,600 24,500 48,500 61,200 89,800
5 3,601-4,800 30,200 59,000 75,000 107,700
6 4,801-5,800 37,800 70,800 90,000 129,300
7 5,801-7,000 45,000 81,800 104,500 149,800
8 7,001-8,400 50,3000 93,500 119,200 170,800
9 8,401-9,600 61,500 109,000 139,200 199,300
10 9,601-15,000 66,200 124,800 159,000 227,500
Oneworld Classic Flight reward Chart — to use this chart you must travel on at least two different oneworld Alliance airlines other than Qantas and you cannot travel on any airline that is not a oneworld member airline. Also, flights operated by Jetstar cannot be included.
For bookings created on or after Sept. 18, 2019:
Zone | Return Miles | Economy | Premium Economy | Business | First |
1 | 0 – 1,200 | 20,000 | 31,600 | 40,000 | 58,000 |
2 | 1,201 – 2,400 | 28,000 | 47,500 | 60,000 | 87,000 |
3 | 2,401 – 4,800 | 40,000 | 69,000 | 87,600 | 129,000 |
4 | 4,801 – 7,200 | 49,000 | 97,000 | 122,400 | 179,600 |
5 | 7,201 – 9,600 | 60,400 | 118,000 | 150,000 | 215,500 |
6 | 9,601 – 11,600 | 75,600 | 141,600 | 180,000 | 258,600 |
7 | 11,601 – 14,000 | 90,000 | 163,600 | 209,000 | 299,600 |
8 | 14,001 – 16,800 | 100,600 | 187,000 | 238,400 | 341,600 |
9 | 16,801 – 19,200 | 123,000 | 218,000 | 278,400 | 398,600 |
10 | 19,201 – 35,000 | 132,400 | 249,600 | 318,000 | 455,000 |
Reward change and booking fees
Qantas is somewhat unique in that it quotes fees in terms of points. The following fees apply to reward reservations:
Fee Type Fee
Reward Assistance Fee (Phone Bookings) International: 6,000 points per passenger
Other: 3,500 points per passenger
Cancellation Refund Fee 6,000 points per passenger
Change fee 5,000 points per passenger
Options when you can’t find reward space
When Classic rewards aren’t available, Qantas makes its own flights plus Jetstar flights available for booking with points using points and cash fares, so the only time a flight won’t be available for booking is if it is completely sold out. If you don’t want to spend the points for a points and cash fare, you can consider other partners that are available for the route you are interested in flying, or look into other mileage options to use instead.
Best reward values: Where to get the most from your miles
If you already have a number of Qantas points, it probably makes sense to use them. Here are some sample offerings:
- Fly from the U.S. East Coast (New York) to Dubai for 75,200 points round trip in economy or 168,000 points round trip in business class.
- Fly from the U.S. East Coast (Washington, D.C.) to Western Europe (London) for 60,400 points round trip in economy or 130,000 points round trip in business class.
- Fly from the U.S. East Coast (Boston) to Australia (Melbourne) for 121,600 points round trip in economy or 256,000 points round trip in business class on Qantas.
Upgrades: How much do they cost?
You can use your Qantas points to upgrade eligible Classic Flight Reward bookings to a higher class of service. Upgrades from economy to premium economy, upgrades from economy to business and upgrades from premium economy to business are all permitted, if there is availability.
You can use the Upgrade Calculator to calculate the cost of the upgrade you are interested in. To give you an idea of the costs, here are the one-way upgrade prices to upgrade Classic Flight Rewards for a few popular routes:
Route Economy to Premium Economy Economy to Business Premium Economy to Business
Sydney-Los Angeles 56,500 90,000 45,000
Sydney-Dallas 62,500 100,000 50,000
Sydney-Tokyo 37,500 60,000 30,000
Sydney-Brisbane N/A 12,000 N/A
Stopover options
Flights booked using oneworld Classic Flight Rewards – for trips made using at least two different oneworld Alliance airlines other than Qantas – allow up to five free stopovers.
Stopovers aren’t allowed on Qantas Classic Flight rewards, for those flights booked on Qantas, Jetstar, Airnorth, Fiji Airways, Air Vanuatu, American Airlines and Emirates.
But since Qantas has a distance-based reward chart, you can sometimes build in a stopover for only a few additional points. In order to do this, you would need to book your trip as two separate tickets: one ticket to the intermediate point and one ticket to the final destination.
For example, if you wanted to fly from Los Angeles to Singapore with a stop in Hong Kong, you could book one ticket from Los Angeles to Hong Kong and a separate ticket from Hong Kong to Singapore.
Routing rules: How to piece together rewards across continents
Qantas also allows round-the-world (RTW) bookings. Since Qantas’ reward chart is distance based, using the oneworld RTW chart above makes more sense than breaking up your trip into separate rewards – as long as you follow the one major routing rule: backtracking between continents is not allowed, though you are allowed to backtrack within a continent.
If you are planning to book a RTW ticket with Qantas, note that you cannot fly partners that are not part of oneworld (like Emirates). You can make up to five stopovers on your RTW booking. The pricing for RTW bookings is based off the pricing for the oneworld Classic Flight reward chart (the fourth chart listed above), and the price is best determined by using the reward Pricing Calculator.
Alternative miles to book Qantas flights
If your goal is to book a Qantas flight, but you don’t have any Qantas Frequent Flyer miles, you’re still in luck. It’s possible to book Qantas flights with Alaska Airlines and all oneworld partners, including American Airlines and British Airways.
Hotel points that you can convert to Qantas
If you have hotel points lying around, it could make sense to transfer them to Qantas. As a general rule, hotel points are more valuable if used for hotel nights, but depending on your needs, you could transfer them in order to top off toward a reward. The following hotel programs offer transfers to Qantas.
- Le Club Accorhotels
- Choice Privileges
- Hilton
- Hyatt
- Marriott
- IHG
Transferring miles to someone else
You can redeem rewards for family members using your Qantas Frequent Flyer miles directly from your account. Family members are defined as:
- husband/wife
- parent/step-parent
- domestic partner/de facto
- child (including foster and step-child)
- 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
Similarly, you can only transfer miles to the same family members with a minimum of 5,000 miles transferred and a maximum of 600,000. It is free to do so online, while there is a charge of $28 USD over the phone.
Expiring miles: How to avoid losing them
Miles expire in 18 months if there isn’t earning or redemption activity on the account. Point transfers to family members do not count as redemption or earning activity.
The information related to the British Airways Visa Signature® Card has been independently collected by CompareCards and has not been reviewed or provided by the issuer of this card prior to publication.