Got Qantas miles? Now you've got more options

By Vanessa Tripodi

Everyone loves getting a bonus, especially after a lot of people, families, jobs and financial institutions have been hit rather hard lately. One of the most effective ways you can get a bonus for your family is a rewards program. While your supermarket, car wash and maybe even your hairdresser may have a "buy five, get the sixth free" sort of system, one of the most widely used rewards programs in Australia is the Qantas Frequent Flyer system.

Linked to a number of credit cards that allow you to accumulate points, and offering points for every time you travel with Qantas, the system means a lot of Australians are spending hard to make sure their points add up to a free seat. Now Qantas are offering even more flights and destinations to reward customers and have announced that customers can redeem their points for flights to destinations across Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East. Qantas have struck up new partnerships with airlines in these regions and now offer over 100 additional destinations.

To redeem seats on flights to these new destinations, Qantas rewards customers will have to book with the more expensive Any Seat option. This is due to the fact that while Qantas can take unsold seats on their own flights and offer them for a certain amount of points, they do not have this sort of allocation option with their partnered airlines. Instead, the seats on partner airlines are sold for the market value, which can often be subject to availability and seasonal changes in popularity. Another new option is allowing rewards customers to actually pay for their airline seats with their accumulated points, rather than accumulating a certain amount of points and then being allocated a reward.

There are a number of Australian credit cards that link with the Qantas frequent flyer program, but many of these cards are gold or platinum cards with equally exclusive annual fees and charges, so can you really come out on top, flying high? An independent study by consumer group Choice found that you would need to be spending around $2,000 a month on your credit card to accumulate enough points to balance the rewards with the fees. However, the average Australian only puts around $1,200 of purchases on his or her credit card each month. Of course, the more you spend, the more points you'll get -- Choice found that spending $5,000 a month on your credit card will get you $1,200 worth of points after the annual fee is deducted.

So, how do you make your Qantas Frequent Flyer miles add up without going into mountainous credit card debt? Use your credit card for all of your purchases -- bills, groceries, fuel -- and you will soon see the points add up. This is also a great way to accumulate interest in your regular accounts as your wages can enter a high interest account at the beginning of the month, you use your credit card for the card's interest-free period, and then simply transfer the amount you need from your wages to pay the balance back to zero at the end of the period. Points and responsible credit card use can go hand in hand.

Article by Vanessa Tripodi

Published: October 7, 2009