Qantas puts premium seats on sale for first time in five years
Qantas unveils its first premium cabin sale since the pandemic with return business fares from $1199 on most international routes including to London.
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Qantas has launched a rare premium cabin sale discounting thousands of business class and premium economy seats on most international routes including to London, New York, Tokyo and Auckland.
In the airline’s first stand-alone premium cabin sale since the pandemic struck, return fares for business class are available from $1199 on Sydney or Melbourne to Auckland, $2599 for Sydney to Nadi (Fiji) and $4999 for Brisbane-Tokyo.
Premium economy sale fares range from $3199 return for Melbourne-Los Angeles, $3549 for Perth-Los Angeles and $4399 for Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne to New York.
The seats are also available to book as Classic Plus reward seats, with 62,500 points needed for Sydney-Auckland return in business class plus $263 for taxes and charges.
Sydney-London return in business is on sale for $8949 or 483,600 points plus $1696.
Qantas Loyalty boss Andrew Glance said the response to Classic Plus rewards had been “overwhelming” following the launch of the new product in April.
Designed to give frequent flyers more opportunity to use big points’ balances on the flights and cabin they most wanted, Mr Glance said they were seeing very strong demand.
“We’ve seen an increase in flight reward redemptions of around 35 per cent, with members booking Classic Plus seats across premium cabins and international destinations in peak periods,” Mr Glance said.
“What we’ve managed to do is address one of those critical pain points that we saw across the Classic product, and that was trying to solve availability (of reward seats).”
He said by the end of the year, 20 million seats in the Qantas network would be available to frequent flyers for purchase as Classic Plus rewards.
As with most other full service airlines, Qantas has seen enormous demand for premium seats since the pandemic as passengers splashed out on business class after two years without travel.
The sale fares will be available to book until 11.59pm on June 20, unless sold out prior, for travel between July 2024 and May 2025.
Bureau of Statistics data released this week showed the number of Australians travelling abroad continued to outstrip pre-pandemic levels, with 964,310 returning from a short-term trip overseas in April compared to 916,430 in April 2019.
Indonesia was the most popular overseas holiday destination for Australian travellers, ahead of New Zealand and Japan.
The number of Australians visiting Indonesia, namely Bali, was outstripping pre-pandemic levels while visitors to Japan were almost double that of the same time in 2019.
Thailand, India, Vietnam and the UK were also seeing more Australian holiday-makers and business travellers in 2024 than in 2019.
On the other hand, Australian visitors to New Zealand, the US, China and Singapore lagged behind pre-pandemic levels.
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Originally published as Qantas puts premium seats on sale for first time in five years
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