It has been almost two years but regular airline travel is finally available to the general public. The gates are opening, quarantines are closing and airlines are providing big incentives to get passengers back in the air. 

Qantas in particular has announced a raft of frequent flyer additions, with points only planes, new routes, increased availability and flexible bookings. It’s great news for individuals such as B2BPay clients who have seen a surplus of Qantas points stack up over this COVID period. 

But if you are looking at your treasure chest of points and already have the next family holiday mapped out, we suggest you get in quick. As whilst Qantas is providing additional availability, it is being snapped up fast. 

On the other hand if you are yet to start building your points portfolio, we’ve got you covered. In this article we will break down the key techniques you can use to earn enough points to travel from Sydney to London in no time.  

Regardless of your situation, there has never been a better time to start or continue to build your points, as we see a revival in the value of frequent flyer programs and other points based incentives. 

Is It Too Late To Grab A Deal? 

Qantas recently announced plans to release “up to 50% more reward seat availability on Qantas international, trans-tasman and popular domestic routes until the end of 2022”. These extra tickets came online from October 19 and savvy travellers have already started taking advantage. 

Oliver Writh, Qantas Loyalty CEO stated that over seven billion points in flights had been spent since flights going on sale with many more available. “This is our way of thanking our frequent flyers for their ongoing loyalty”. 

Even with a considerable surge of loyalty program spending, there is still a huge amount of deals available to the loyalty program members. However, the best value options such as the Classic Reward seats are being purchased fast.  

What Are Classic Reward Seats? 

These types of airline seats are made available to purchase by Qantas for the smallest amount of frequent flyer points and therefore can be quite difficult to book. Usually there is only a limited number allocated per flight but as mentioned earlier Qantas has increased its annual capacity by a further 50%.  

Before COVID hit, on more popular routes travellers would often have to book up to 6 months or a year in advance to get their hands on a Classic Reward seat. But with limited travel, additional allocation and slow growing consumer demand – there is still a wealth of tickets on the market.  

It is important to note that once these seats are booked you can still purchase airline seats using your points, but it will cost you the cash equivalent, without any discount. This means you could end up paying three times more in points for the same flight.  

To make things even more attractive for Classic Reward bookings, Qantas is now offering flexible dates and cancellation until 28 February 2022, simply book: 

• An Australian domestic or trans-Tasman Classic Flight Reward before 28 February 2022 and you can change or cancel your booking free of charge until 28 February 2022 
• An international Classic Flight Reward before 28 February 2022 and you can change or cancel free of charge until 31 December 2022. 

If you have the points and want to travel sometime in 2022, then taking advantage of one of the Flexible Classic Reward seats is a win-win at the moment.  

Just How Much Do These Flights Cost? 

To give you a bit more context as to the enormity and immediacy of these new Qantas offers we have broken down some common flight routes and their current points value (one-way classic reward flights).