Qantas Points Plan flights – how many points will they burn?

I’ve been reading quite a bit of coverage of booking for this flight, which runs between Melbourne and Tokyo on 21st October, with booking starting on 16 May 2019.

Since I have commented that this is partly a ploy by Qantas and Qantas Loyalty to get a stack of Frequent Flyer Points liability off their books – I thought I should work out how many points they will burn on this one off, one way flight?

What will seats cost in points?

Here are the charges for seats in various classes for the one way flight:

• 108,000 Qantas Points for first class
• 72,000 Qantas Points for business class
• 54,000 Qantas Points for premium economy
• 35,000 Qantas Points for economy

How many seats are on the plane?

On a Qantas A380, the split of classes is:

• 14 First Class
• 64 Business
• 35 Premium Economy
• 371 Economy

How many points?

lets just multiply this out:

Class	Seats	Points	Total
First	14	108,000	1,512,000
Business	64	72,000	4,608,000
Premium	35	54,000	1,890,000
Economy	371	35,000	12,985,000
Tot	484	Total	20,995,000

So, that’s rounded up – 21 million points. A drop in the ocean!

According to a news report on the ABC news site in 2018, there are 12 million members of the Qantas frequent flyer program, who have earned more than 120 billion points just in 2017. Is google’s maths is any good, that would require about 5,714 A380 flights to clear a year’s worth of points.

Income generator?

All of those people going to Tokyo will need to return, and there are only ~297 seats (28 Business and 269 Economy) on the scheduled return points flight on an A330. That leaves 187 mainly paying customers – I warrant. So maybe its a roundabout way of selling some more tickets?

2PAXfly Take out

I think it is mainly a Public Relations exercise. They had a spare flight, the cost of which is presumably already covered by the leasor of the charter flight. So for the cost of a bit of catering, and someone to write a press release, they sound like they are totally giving something to their Frequent Flyers, while they get rid of 21 million frequent flyer points. Win Win, Win!