Bit confused about the benefits of Flexible Points programs

Hi Everyone,

I understand the benefits of being able to select multiple airline programs to deposit points, to use for award flights. However, I thought most airlines would release most or their best award flights to the passengers with status like Gold or Platinum Status. (Like Qantas)

So I guess my question would be: do flexible reward programs only have significant value to flyers that can get status from multiple airlines or do airlines release a lot of their award flights to everyone?

From my understanding, this is how things work:

• Earning status is totally separate from earning points. With a few small exceptions, the only way to earn status with an airline is to fly with them on paid flights. Whether you accumulate points with flexible points programs or not has no bearing on earning status.
• Qantas does make some reward seats available to its frequent flyers with higher status first. However, when it comes to availability, the majority of airlines don't do this: they make seats available to all members of their FF programme. As far as I can tell, your assertion that "most airlines" are like Qantas in this regard is incorrect.
• Many airlines (Singapore Airlines being an obvious example) make more reward seats available to members of their own FF programs than to members of other affiliated FF programs. So to use Singapore Airlines as an example again, you are far more likely to find business reward seats available to KrisFlyer members than to members of other Star Alliance FF programmes (and Velocity, for that matter).

So to answer your question: flexible points programs are of great value, because it means that you can transfer your points into those airline FF programs that have seats available.