Status on a budget - speed up your journey to becoming a Platinum Qantas FF.
Post date: Oct 24, 2018 9:57:32 AM
There is a subculture of frequent flyers that are status hungry; the special treatment that comes with Platinum status is their holy grail. Frequent Flyers that travel weekly for work attain this tier of service investing little effort on their part. For others, the ascendency is less certain.
Let's arm these status hungry individuals that work where they live with some data on how best to shorten and cheapen the journey to Platinum.
If the ultimate goal is status, then we need to optimise for lowest cost per status credit attained. The levers we can play with are the route, fare class, date of travel and date of booking.
For the purpose of this blog I have ran analysis across:
route - collecting data for Qantas destinations departing from Brisbane; including those with multiple segments
fare class - collecting data for red-e-deals, all economy fares and business fares
I kept the travel date constant - 14 Oct 2018, 3 weeks from the date I queried the prices.
Also worth noting is that Qantas run promotions where they award double status credits, booking within these promotion guidelines will obviously help achieve the holy grail of status.
Summary Findings
The lowest cost per status credit can be attained flying to Denpasar, on a Business Sale fare. At $1000 each way and a whopping 180 status credits each way, you are only paying $5.55/ status credit. See below - Top 20 Destinations - Lowest Cost/ Status Credit - Departing Brisbane for details.
All of the Top 20 destinations with the lowest cost/ status credit have multiple QF segments.
On average the best fare class is Business Saver, you get an average of .11 status credits per dollar spent, by contrast, Red e-Deals (my usual fare), gives an average of .05 status credits per dollar spent. See below - Comparing Fare Classes - Multi-Segment and Single-Segment Journeys - Departing Brisbane.
If you are flexible in destination, the best fare class to seek out is Business Sale or Business Saver. See below - Comparing Fare Classes - Multi-Segment and Single-Segment Journeys - Departing Brisbane.
Top 20 Destinations - Lowest Cost/ Status Credit - Departing Brisbane
The chart below outlines the optimal cost per status credit for flights leaving Brisbane. Whilst anecdotal at best - the analysis was only ran for a point in time and all of the journey's depart Brisbane - we can draw some themes -
If you are paying $10/ status credit, you are getting good value
You will likely be taking the scenic route to your destination, all of the routes below have more than one flight segment
Comparing Fare Classes - Multi-Segment and Single-Segment Journeys - Departing Brisbane
Status comes to those that pay for luxury - the cheapest way to get it is to purchase luxury at a discount.
Analysing both: the lowest and the average cost/ status credit we find that the Business Sale and Business Saver fares are the best way to ascend the status hierarchy.
Notably, for a typical economy fare, on average, you should only expect ~1 status credit/ $20 spent. Anything better than this and you are doing well.
Comparing Fare Classes - Single-Segment Journeys - Departing Brisbane
Unsurprisingly, the average cost/ status credit increases when we remove routes with multiple segments.
The lowest cost/ status credit increases to $8.92/ status credit
The variance in the average across the fares narrow significantly
All of the averages are higher
Fly multi-segment journeys if your goal is status!