It’s in the DNA of human beings that we love receiving and availing perks. And as the cost of living continues to increase day by day, such benefits are getting more and more beneficial for ordinary people like us. If by any chance you’re a frequent flyer then this is the best time to be alive. You can sign up for the frequent flyer programs and get free flights, upgrades and access to all those high-end lounges you never thought you’ll get to enter. Here we discuss the top 5 flyer programs that Australians can benefit from.
1- QANTAS Flyer Program
These points are collected by choosing QANTAS for flying around the world or flying with its partner airlines like Jetstar, British Airways, Emirates, and American Airlines. You can also utilize your frequent flyer program points by purchasing the eligible products and services with a linked debit or credit card. There are four levels of membership – bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The higher your membership, the more benefits you get.
2- Velocity Frequent Flyer Program
Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer Program enables people to earn points when they fly with Virgin or with its partner airlines. Besides getting free tickets, these collected points can be used for stays in the hotels that are aligned with Virgin, car hire companies and much more.
3- Flybuys Loyalty Program
Flybuys does allow its customers to spend their collected points on airline tickets, but their main focus is on offering such incentives that the customers can use in their day to day lives, like homewares, fashion products, entertainment items, and even on groceries.
4- Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer Program
This program also works in the same way. It makes you earn the miles by flying with Singapore Airlines or by using a linked credit card to pay for the services offered by KrisFlyer’s partners.
5- Emirates Skywards Program
Emirates’ frequent flyer program has two parts – Skyward Miles and Tier Miles. The Skyward Miles can be earned when you spend the limit of your linked credit card, or when you fly with Emirates or with its partnering airlines like Japan Airlines, Virgin America, Korean Air, and QANTAS. These collected points can be redeemed for various things like flights, car rentals, hotels and flight upgrades. On the other hand, Tier Miles are only collected when you fly with Emirates only.
Now let’s see how these earned flyer miles can be combined together.
Combining Miles by Alliance
Almost all the major airlines in the world belong to one of the three major airline alliances:
- Star Alliance includes United, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and 25 others.
- Oneworld includes American Airlines, QANTAS, British Airways and 12 more.
- SkyTeam includes Delta, KLM, Alitalia and 12 others.
You can carry the flyer miles that you’ve earned from one airline to the partnering airlines if need be. This way you can gather all your flyer miles that you’ve earned from different airlines together in one place. For more details you can visit pointsbank.com.au.
However, flyer miles earned by frequently flying with the airlines that aren’t the part of any of these three alliances, like Southwest and Virgin Atlantic, are not transferable to other airlines. You have to redeem those points by flying around everywhere with those airlines only.