Qantas is doubling down on the whole points plane concept in 2023. They have also announced that they intend to offer five million reward seats in 2023 which can be booked using Qantas points.
In good news for prolific Qantas flyers, you should have plenty of opportunities to use your Qantas points next year. There will be a heap of reward seats on offer and – even better than that – Qantas is doubling down on the points plane concept.
This is good because, on points planes, there are way more seats available to be booked purely with points than there are on normal flights. They are also typically cheaper (in terms of points) because you’re not competing with someone willing to pay cash to book the same seat as you.
In good news for those looking to burn some points, Qantas are looking to satiate this demand.
Points Planes are particularly good because a ‘standard’ reward seat can reportedly cost triple the number of points versus a seat booked on a Qantas’ points plane promotion. Points planes are essentially flights that Qantas reserves, for certain dates, entirely for people booking with points, to give loyal customers the chance to make the most of their accrued points.
Previous points planes have flown to places like New Caledonia and New Zealand. Though no-one knows exactly where each points plane will be flying next year, we do know that there will be at least one to Tokyo.
Domestically, points planes are revving up too, with Qantas this month announcing 3,000 flights across January and February to be points planes in a “biggest ever release.” Destinations included Byron Bay, Hamilton Island, Broome and the Gold Coast.
Demonstrating the popularity of points planes, last month, Qantas announced that frequent flyers would be able to seize thousands more reward seats as Qantas and Jetstar celebrated the reopening of Japan for international travel.
Up to 100,000 reward seats would be available across six routes, Qantas revealed, with the six routes being Sydney and Tokyo (Haneda), Brisbane and Tokyo (Haneda) and Melbourne and Tokyo (Haneda). The same will apply to Jetstar flights between Cairns and Tokyo (Narita), Cairns and Osaka (Kansai) and the Gold Coast and Tokyo (Narita).
To kick off of the six weeks of reward seats, Qantas will operate two Points Planes between Sydney and Tokyo (Haneda) on 10 May 2023, meaning every seat in every cabin, including Business, could be booked as a Classic Flight Reward.
Qantas said it would also offer Points Planes between Sydney and Hong Kong on 30 January 2023 when the airline restarts its Hong Kong flights.
This all comes off the back of August, when a points promo blitz saw Qantas customers redeem a record breaking 1.2 billion points redeemed over just two days.
