Qantas offer to frequent flyers — more than 100 ‘points planes’ to Noumea

The airline is turning more than 100 international flights into ‘points planes’ for frequent flyers to redeem stockpiled points. There’s just one catch.

Qantas frequent flyers are being offered the chance to redeem their stockpiled points on international flights with thousands of seats being made available on over 100 “points planes”.

The only catch is every flight is to the same destination – Noumea in New Caledonia.

Qantas currently operates one flight a week from Brisbane to Noumea, and four from Sydney using Boeing 737 aircraft.

All will be converted to “points planes” in August, September, October and November with the exception of the school holiday period and two other weeks in mid-August and late October.

Frequent flyers will need to find 12,000 points for a one-way economy seat on Brisbane to Noumea, and 18,000 from Sydney. Business class seats are also available for 27,600 points from Brisbane and 41,500 from Sydney.

Since flights resumed to New Caledonia in June, Qantas says it has seen “hundreds” of people take off for a tropical holiday each week.

Travellers should expect to pay about $120 in taxes, charges and carrier fees for each points’ booking.

Qantas Loyalty CEO Olivia Wirth said flights remained frequent flyers’ favourite way to use their points.

“We continue to see incredibly strong demand across domestic and international travel as frequent flyers use the Qantas points they saved during the pandemic to book reward seats in record numbers,” said Ms Wirth.

Since flights resumed to New Caledonia in June, Qantas had seen “hundreds” of people take off for a tropical holiday each week, she said.

“Now frequent flyers can book any available seat across most flights using points,” Ms Wirth said.

“In addition to these latest points planes there are still millions of classic flight reward seats available across domestic and international routes for the remainder of the year on Qantas, Jetstar and partner airlines.”

Virgin Australia was also providing more opportunities for its Velocity frequent flyer program members through its partnership with Singapore Airlines.

Velocity CEO Nick Rohrlach said the program’s 10.8 million members could now use points to book a premium economy seat on Singapore Airlines, as well as business and economy.

“Singapore Airlines is known for their fantastic service, and through our deep and much-loved partnership, members and customers have access to the most one-stop connections between

Australia and Singapore out of any other airline loyalty program,” Mr Rohrlach said.

“The other great news is that we will switch on the ability for our members to transfer points between Velocity and KrisFlyer later this month, and at this stage we are aiming to resume this ability on July 19.”

He said the Velocity program was going from strength to strength with the membership hitting 10.8 million, making it one of the “most loved loyalty programs in the country”.

Qantas frequent flyers has more than 13 million, and Woolworths’ Everyday Rewards is the second largest loyalty scheme operating in Australia with about 12 million members.

Originally published as Qantas offer to frequent flyers — more than 100 ‘points planes’ to Noumea