Over 200,000 Qantas Reward Seats Go On Sale At 11 AM Today

Following news that Qantas is, surprisingly, cruising toward record profits, the Flying Kangaroo has revealed plans to unleash an army of fresh Points Planes across its domestic network. Available for bookings from 11 AM today, almost 3,000 flights on board Qantas Points Planes will be available to some of the nation’s most popular destinations to help Aussies and tourists kick off the new year with some classic reward travel.

Wait, What’s A Qantas Points Plane?

It’s simple, really. Every seat on a Points Plane is deemed a reward seat and can be booked as a Classic Flight Reward. This includes both economy and business class seats.

Qantas has been occasionally running Points Planes for both domestic and international services over the past year where every seat can be booked as a Classic Flight Reward. In other words, you can use your stash of Qantas Frequent Flyer points to book the seats rather than have to contend with fluctuating airfares. You’d just need to pay taxes and fees on top of that, so for a one-way between Gold Coast and Sydney, for example, you’d need to spend 8,000 Qantas Points and pay $42 on top of that.

The most recent example of domestic Qantas Points Planes came just a few months ago in August when the airline offered over 130,000 Classic Reward seats for Aussie travellers to get around the country. Reportedly, the promo was so successful that 1.2 billion Qantas points were redeemed over two days.

This current offer is much of the same thing, just dialed up with just under double the amount of reward seats available.

Qantas Reward Seats To Byron Bay, Hamilton Island & More

Qantas has announced today that enough Qantas Points Planes will be available for six weeks of flights across 21 routes to help Aussies celebrate summer. That totals around 225,000 reward seats, primarily to coastal destinations like Byron Bay, Hamilton Island, Broome and the Gold Coast.

For the next 72 hours, frequent flyers will be able to book reward seats on all flights for travel between January 9-22 and all of February next year.

“This is a record release of Points Planes that will help thousands of our frequent flyers use their points to book a coastal holiday this summer,” said Qantas Loyalty CEO Olivia Wirth.

“Whenever we release Points Planes, we see huge demand from our frequent flyers and they often sell out. These flights are to some of Australia’s best summer destinations during peak travel months, so our advice is to book as soon as possible.”

And that’s not just typical PR speak either. Whenever Qantas releases Points Planes, bookings tend to fly right out off the tarmac as quickly as possible. Just last month Qantas released 100,00 classic reward seats to Japan and demand was feverish. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see this current run all booked out well before the 72-hour window closes.

Many of these reward seats can be booked from 8,000 points one way. Unlike traditional airfares, the points required to fly on these routes haven’t really seen an increase in recent times.

Frequent Flyers reportedly earned over 118 billion Qantas Points last financial year with more than two-thirds of those earned on the ground via credit cards and shopping as well as other non-transit means.

We’ve included the full list of the Qantas Points Planes available in January and February 2023 for your convenience. You only have until Friday, December 2 to get on board.

Will There Be More Qantas Reward Seats In 2023?

Fortunately, releasing Points Planes to both international and domestic destinations seems to be increasingly integral to Qantas’ business plan moving forward. Wirth has recently been quoted promising more than five million reward seats coming for Qantas Frequent Flyers over the next 12 months, totaled across both Qantas and budget carrier Jetstar as well as its network of 45 partner airlines.

Let’s hope you didn’t sink all your points into toasters and air fryers during lockdown.

Qantas Points Planes In January & February 2023