Qantas Frequent Flyer is now a UK American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

With no fanfare at all, Qantas Frequent Flyer has apppeared this morning as a UK American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner.

The transfer rate is 1:1.

The minimum transfer is 500 points.

The quoted transfer time is 3 business days.

If you have an existing Qantas Frequent Flyer account, this should be an easy way of stopping points from expiring.

See here:

This is a very short article because I don’t know the slightest thing about Qantas Frequent Flyer. However, here is the key – Qantas is, of course, a member of the oneworld alliance. This means that you can redeem Qantas Frequent Flyer points for flights on British Airways.

I have absolutely no idea:

how many points such redemptions require

what sort of taxes and charges are required

what the cancellation rules are

whether you need to book return tickets

whether you can book open jaw tickets etc

….. so I can’t tell you at the moment whether it’s better than transferring to British Airways Executive Club. I also don’t know what non-oneworld partners are available, except for the well publicised Emirates and KLM joint ventures.

In general, though, Qantas Frequent Flyer does not have a great reputation and I don’t expect a lot of sweet spots to appear.

I also don’t know generous the scheme is if you credit future British Airways flights to Qantas Frequent Flyer instead of BAEC. As Amex now offers you an easy way of topping up your flight miles to the exact level you need for a reward, this might be an option for some people.

It is especially interesting if you have already retained your British Airways status and have flexibility about where you credit future flights in your membership year.

Qantas Frequent Flyer UK American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner

I’ll do some digging over the next few days.

You can see the Membership Rewards UK airline partners on the Amex website here.

You can find out more about Qantas Frequent Flyer on the Qantas site here.

PS. Aer Lingus AerClub seems to have disappeared as a partner, not that it matters since you can move points from BA or Iberia

PPS. Can someone please tell Amex how to spell “Singapore KrysFlyer” properly?! Perhaps change the Qantas headline to ‘Qantas Frequent Flyer’ and not ‘Qantas Point Transfer’ too …..

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

American Express Membership Rewards, oneworld alliance partners

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

guesswho2000 says:

22 Jun22 June 11:24

In a nutshell – you need quite a lot of points but the lowest is 8,000 for MEL-SYD, fees/charges are applied (was around $650 for J MEL-SCL, as a quick point for comparison), one ways are possible, open jaws are possible, redemptions are in distance bands.

For UK based readers, as I see it, the jewels in the crown are probably EK, JQ/3K/GK, LY & WS redemptions.
- guesswho2000 says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 11:27
  
  I tell a lie about the lowest being 8k, Jetstar redemptions are lower (around 20%) than QF on the same route, as an incentive to use the LCC over full service.
Benj says:

22 Jun22 June 11:33

I transferred 500 MR this morning and they arrived instantly in my Qantas account.
Ste says:

22 Jun22 June 11:34

This is great for French Polynesia redemptions – always use QF points in J on air Tahiti nui en route to Conrad Bora Bora. Even using a stack of points it’s not cheap but a fantastic destination, better than Maldives IMHO.
- meta says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 14:17
  
  On my admittedly limited search into this, I think you’re much better using AAdvantage miles as the taxes are much lower. On some of the dates I looked round trip in J LA to Tahiti was $48 with American miles vs $450 with Qantas. The difference in miles was 10k. Of course AAdvantage miles are harder to acquire in the UK. Anyone knows more?
- George K says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 22:41
  
  What’s your preferred route to Bora Bora from the UK by the way?
  - Ste says:
    
    23 Jun23 June 08:18
    
    I hadn’t looked at the AAdvantage route, will take a look next time. Not sure on there flight times either.
    
    via LA with 1 or 2 nights there (@ La Peer – nice area, good walk to Runyon), then head on to Tahiti, another overnight stop (@ IC – nice hotel and only 5mins from airport) before arriving in Bora Bora and on the hotel boat. Daytime flights the whole way, arrive fresh 🙂
    
    Perfect for the outbound but not so good on the return – last time was back to back overnight flights! 🙁
Rich says:

22 Jun22 June 12:03

Not sure if it’s still true, but Qantas used to be a good place to credit deep-discount economy fares on BA. They got 25% mileage in BAEC but 100% in QF. I used them for an Air Berlin redemption, which was good value, although I can’t remember the details.
- Lyn says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 19:36
  
  Unfortunately this has changed.
- Wally1976 says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 21:55
  
  Yes, back in 2003 I credited points from my round the world ticket to Qantas and ended up with a free Nintendo DS! This was a rebate of about £100 worth on a £2k ticket if memory serves. Only snag was it had to be delivered to an Australian address so I had it delivered to my friend’s wife’s parents then waited several months until they visited. It wasn’t worth me using the points for a flight at that time.
Jase says:

22 Jun22 June 12:07

Good news for expats to stop points expiring after 18 months. I’m Lifetime Gold with QF, (OWS / BA Silver) so have no intention of crediting to them having shifted to BAEC.
The only other option was to use a VPN to OZ and make a restaurant reservation via Quandoo (100 QFF Points per person) for a London restaurant, however their restaurant selection is limited and I usually had to chase points to be credited.
In terms of the scheme itself, I would not bother joining as redemptions are difficult and the taxes are worse than BA. I have a stash of 400,000+ QFF points that I mainly use for domestic J upgrades, especially SYD – PER. You can tell what flights will have a classic award upgrade from Y to J, so I just make sure I book those. It’s nice to do with family as they don’t get to fly with QF’s ridiculous J prices.
- Jase says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 12:56
  
  One other use is when BA use a valid fare code when a flight change is made. I had an Amex Companion Voucher to GIG where the flight was cancelled and so I asked to be moved a day and they opened up a revenue seat, A class. It credited to QFF but not to my partner’s BAEC. This was a few years ago.
- Jk says:
  
  23 Jun23 June 09:50
  
  Expat in London. Came here to write pretty much exactly what you said. Good summary. Some niche routes but otherwise no reason to look at this for the average UK based traveller.
Lady London says:

22 Jun22 June 12:08

for newbies, wheretocredit dot com could be useful. Always check costs for redemptions – cash and miles – as well.
- mutley says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 12:47
  
  And for oldies like me LL, Thanks! I had completely forgotten about whereto credit.
- rob says:
  
  22 Jun22 June 17:46
  
  http://www.awardhacker.com is probably where you’ll be wanting to look for redemptions.
  
  WTC is mainly for revenue flights I believe.
Andrew says:

22 Jun22 June 12:33

I recently booked an economy flight with QF and was surprised that One World Emerald still have to pay for exit row seats – first time I’ve seen that. Turns out only their own very top tier get it for free (their equivalent of GGL, above Emerald). The redemption rates for QF also seem better with Avios via BAEC so I’m not sure it’s worth transferring to QF to use to book flights, but good to top up, avoid expiring etc.
Neil Donoghue says:

22 Jun22 June 13:15

This is a fantastic addition for Uk card members! I’ve always had to use Marriot to transfer points to QF. A few cheeky redemptions are Air Nui for Bora Bora and also Lord Howe Island using QF points.