Qantas Frequent Flyer Award Booking Instructions

Qantas is the largest Australian airline by several metrics, including number of international flights and international destinations. It has a massive worldwide footprint and operates flights to all seven continents (including Antarctica). Qantas also operates its own frequent flyer program, simply called Qantas Frequent Flyer, that’s worth paying attention to even if you don’t ever plan on flying with Qantas.

The Qantas Frequent Flyer program is a transfer partner of many of the major credit card rewards programs, which means you can easily earn Qantas points if you have an American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Rewards or Citi ThankYou Rewards credit card. On top of that, Qantas is a founding member of Oneworld Alliance, which means you can also earn points with this program by flying with any Oneworld Alliance airline (as well as with several non-Oneworld airlines).

Perhaps best of all, the Qantas Frequent Flyer program uses one distance-based award chart to price Qantas-operated award flights and another distance-based award chart to price partner-operated award flights. This means you can find plenty of award flight redemptions through the Qantas Frequent Flyer program that offer outsized value (multiple cents per point).

For all of these reasons, getting familiar with the Qantas Frequent Flyer program is a good idea. So, in this article, we’re going to discuss the process of booking an award flight through this program. Then, once you’ve saved up enough points for your next award flight, you’ll have no problem making your booking through Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Joining Qantas Frequent Flyer

Before you make any award flight redemptions through Qantas Frequent Flyer, you’ll need to join the program. You can enroll in the program by visiting the Qantas website and clicking the “Log in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage. Then click the red “Join here” hyperlink that appears at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be asked to provide some personal information, including your country of residence, gender, name, email address, phone number, home address and date of birth. You’ll also be asked to create a four-digit PIN that you’ll use to log in in the future.

Finally, you’ll confirm all of your information. You’ll then be assigned a Qantas Frequent Flyer membership number, which we’d recommend writing down. You’ll need this number to log in to your account and earn Qantas points in the future. You should also receive an email containing your membership number.

How To Earn Qantas Frequent Flyer Points

As a member of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, you’re eligible to earn and redeem points. However, before you book an award flight, you’ll need to have enough points in your account to pay for a flight. The cheapest award flights available through the Qantas Frequent Flyer program are Jetstar-operated economy award flights under 600 miles, which cost 6,400 points (this will change to 5,700 points starting August 5, 2025). So, you’ll need to have at least that many points in your account before making an award flight redemption.

There are a lot of different ways to earn points through Qantas Frequent Flyer. However, some earning methods are far more effective than others. In the following sections, we’re going to take a brief look at some of the most effective earning methods so that you can quickly earn enough points for your next award flight.

Transfer Credit Card Points

For most U.S. travelers, the most effective way to earn points with Qantas Frequent Flyer is to transfer points from credit card rewards programs. As mentioned above, Qantas Frequent Flyer is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards, all of which allow transfers at a 1:1 ratio.

For example, if you had 70,000 Capital One Miles, you could transfer those miles to the Qantas Frequent Flyer program for free and have 70,000 Qantas points in your account within minutes.

It’s worth noting, however, that American Express charges a fee of $0.0006 per point transferred to frequent flyer programs (with a maximum fee of $99). So, if you were to transfer 50,000 Amex points to the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, you would have to pay a fee of $30. Capital One and Citi don’t charge any such transfer fees.

Flying With Qantas and Partner Airlines

Another effective way to earn Qantas points is to credit paid flights on Qantas or one of its airline partners to the Qantas Frequent Flyer program. To do this, you’ll need to select Qantas Frequent Flyer as your frequent flyer program of choice and enter your membership number, either when making your booking or when checking in for your flight.

When taking paid flights on Qantas or Jetstar, you’ll earn points based on the route you’re flying and your booking class. To find the number of points you’ll earn on a paid flight operated by Qantas or Jetstar, visit the “Qantas and Jetstar earning tables” page on the Qantas website, find the table that corresponds with the route you’re flying on and find the cell in that table for you booking class.

For example, any Qantas- or Jetstar-operated paid flight between Europe and Southeast Asia in Flexible Economy class earns you 7,200 points.

You can also earn Qantas points by flying with any Oneworld Alliance airline. Here’s the current list of Oneworld member airlines:

On top of the Oneworld airlines listed above, Qantas has partnerships with several non-Oneworld airlines that also allow you to earn Qantas points on paid flights. These non-Oneworld partners include:

To find out how many points you could earn on a partner flight, visit the “Partner airlines earning tables” page on the Qantas website, find the table for the route you plan to fly and find the cell in that table for the booking class you’re planning on flying in. The tables on this page apply to paid flights on all eligible partner airlines.

For example, per the table above, an American Airlines-operated flight between the U.S. East Coast and the U.S. West Coast in Business class would earn 3,125 points.

Booking Airbnb Stays

Another relatively effective way to earn Qantas points is to book stays with Airbnb. Qantas Frequent Flyer members can earn 1X points per 1 Australian dollar spent on Airbnb bookings. First-time Airbnb users will receive an additional 500 points for their first booking.

For those who spend a lot on Airbnb bookings (if you travel a lot for work, for instance), you can earn a fair amount of extra Qantas points. To earn Qantas points on Airbnb bookings, visit the Airbnb partnership page on the Qantas Hotels website, log in to your Qantas account and book your Airbnb stay through that portal.

Other Ways To Earn

There are plenty of other ways to earn points through the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, including transferring points from hotel loyalty programs, booking hotel stays, renting cars, booking activities, subscribing to streaming services, ordering meal kits through HelloFresh and more. Unfortunately, none of these earning methods are particularly effective on their own.

However, if you use Qantas Frequent Flyer as your primary frequent flyer program, it’s definitely worth looking into these other earning methods to earn some extra points here and there.

How To Book Award Flights Through Qantas Frequent Flyer

Now that you’re familiar with the processes of signing up for the Qantas Frequent Flyer program and earning points, you’re ready to purchase an award flight. The first thing you’ll need to do is visit the Qantas website and log in to your account by clicking the red icon in the top-right corner of the screen and entering your account credentials.

Once you’ve signed in, click the “Frequent Flyer” drop-down menu from the homepage. From that menu, choose the “Use Qantas Points” option. This will lead you to a new page where you can see the many ways to spend Qantas points. However, since you want to book an award flight, you should click the “Classic Flight Rewards” option.

It’s worth noting that there’s also an option to search for “Classic Plus Flight Rewards.” These rewards are priced using a dynamic pricing model, which means the award prices will follow cash prices pretty closely (which means you won’t be able to find high value for your points). Classic Flight Rewards, on the other hand, are priced using distance-based award charts, which means you will be able to find outsized value on this type of award. So, if you want to maximize the value of your Qantas points, you should search for Class Flight Rewards. However, if you’re desperate to book a flight with Qantas points and it’s not available as a Classic Flight Reward, you may want to consider booking it as a Classic Plus Flight Reward.

Regardless which option you choose, you’ll have to click the red “Search flight rewards” button on the next page to access the award flight search tool. Once you arrive at this tool, searching for award flights is essentially the same as searching for cash flights.

Next, you’ll enter your departure airport, arrival airport, type of flight (round-trip or one-way), number of passengers and travel dates and click the “Search flights” button to see the results.

From here, you’ll see all of the flights that match your search query, including flights operated by Qantas or by its eligible airline partners. You can filter these results by several factors, including departure and arrival time, price, number of stops and flight duration. You can also sort these results by cabin class and more.

Once you find a flight that suits your needs, add it to your itinerary by clicking on the cabin class next to that you want and then clicking the red “Add to trip” button. You can repeat this process for your return flight if you’re flying round-trip.

After you’ve selected your flights, you’ll be able to see the total points required for your trip as well as the total taxes and fees. If everything looks right, proceed to add personal details for any passengers traveling on your itinerary, including name, date of birth, phone number and email.

Finally, you’ll need to add a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees. Once you’ve added a payment method, you can confirm your award flight booking. At that point, you should receive a confirmation number, which you’ll need to check in to your flight. You should also receive this confirmation number in an email.

If you decide that you want to cancel your award flight booking, you’ll need to do so up to 24 hours before departure.

The Bottom Line

The Qantas Frequent Flyer program is a useful tool for award travel enthusiasts for a lot of reasons. The program is a transfer partner of American Express, Capital One and Citi, which means that many U.S. consumers can earn Qantas points by transferring credit card points. Qantas is also a member of Oneworld Alliance, which means you can earn Qantas points by flying on any other Oneworld airline (as well as with several non-Oneworld airline partners). So, even if you never set foot on a Qantas aircraft, you can easily earn a lot of Qantas points.

You can get great value by redeeming Qantas points for Classic Flight Rewards, which are award flights operated by Qantas or one of its airline partners that are priced according to a distance-based award chart. In general, we recommend only redeeming Qantas points for Classic Flight Rewards and avoiding other redemption methods (including Class Plus Flight Rewards, which are dynamically priced).

The Qantas Frequent Flyer program makes the process of purchasing award flights fairly easy. It is slightly confusing to find the award flight booking tool on the Qantas website. But, once you’re there, it functions pretty much the same as purchasing cash flights. And, if you ever need help navigating this process, you can refer to the step-by-step guide in this article.