Booked flights on Jetstar a month or so ago using my Qantas points to fly BNE to Tokyo business for 51000 + $200 each way. No special deals, that’s what the points/price was around for all dates.
Now looking at the same time and flights the points cost is literally 4 times as much!
Even searching dates further out they are still around 200000 one way in jetstar business.
What’s happened all of a sudden?
Same with fights to BKK. I got a return flight in July with Jetstar in business as well for the same 51000pts +$200 Now it’s 200000
It’s not just business, economy is 4 times as much as well.
I think what you’re seeing at the moment is Qantas listing mostly the new Classic Plus redemption options. These are waaaay more “expensive” points-wise than a Classic Reward seat redemption. I’m guessing here, but I’d hazard a guess that your original Jetstar BNE - Tokyo was booked as a Classic Reward, hence the massive difference.
My son just came to visit for Christmas in Perth from Melbourne and was able to get 2 extra days off work, so tried changing his Business Class Classic Reward flight booking to come earlier. There literally was not a Classic Reward seat in sight… anywhere! But every day pretty much had Classic Plus seats available for nearly quadruple the price. We ended up shelling out 208,000pts + change/cancellation fees (in points) for the original outbound Perth flight! You could literally fly Business class Perth - Dubai on Emirates with a classic reward, or 1st class for only 50,000pts more!
It’s essentially like Uber surge pricing and I believe that Qantas will probably start doing more of this sort of thing (IMHO). Check out this article to learn more about this “new and improved value-for-money offering” from Qantas!
I’d keep an eye on the routes you’re interested in and use some of the tools available for setting alerts to be notified when Classic Reward seats become available and then be ready to jump on it asap when they do!
Thanks for the explanation and advice. Much appreciated.
I’m only new to the rewards points game, but it would seem that Qantas has come up with this “plus” rewards thing as a way to reduce the amount of rewards fares available and by giving it the name “plus” they are trying to make us think it’s somehow a positive thing for us? When in actuality is just a plus for them.
