Qantas rejigs flight change fees, travel credits

Qantas is revamping its Flight Credits scheme to make the program more flexible, while also delaying an increase to the fees for changing or cancelling flights.

From today, Wednesday October 9, Qantas customers holding Flight Credits will be able to use those credits across multiple bookings.

The previous system was widely criticised for only allowing passengers to use their Flight Credit to rebook fares equal to or higher than their original booking, which meant they had to redeem the Flight Credit in a single booking.

Qantas Flight Credits will now let passengers redeem part of that credit against lower-priced fares and retain the difference to be used for future bookings.

The airline says the change “will be retrospectively applied to more than 100,000 Flight Credits requested by customers. The ‘multi-use’ rule already applies when Qantas cancels a flight and the customer elects to receive a credit.”

Travellers who booked directly with Qantas can find their credit by logging into their Qantas Frequent Flyer or Qantas Business Rewards account and selecting 'See all bookings', and use that flight credit by selecting the “Use Flight Credit” tab on the homepage.

Passengers with bookings made through a travel agent or third-party websites should contact them directly if they have a credit, and they are ready to rebook.

Qantas delays higher rebooking, cancellation fees

Qantas has also confirmed it will delay a planned increase to change fees on domestic flights.

The airline says those changes, due to take effect from today, will still go ahead at some future stage, but that some further technical testing is required.

When those changes do kick in, passengers will see the cost of changing or cancelling bookings for domestic flights increase from $99 to $119 across a range of fare types.

All economy and premium economy fares will be hit within the 20% hike, with business class remaining unaffected.

The higher fees were first revealed in an advisory to travel agents published in early September, with the airline noting “the last increase to these fees was in March 2017.”

The cost of changing the date or time of a Qantas flight booked as a Red E-Deal economy ticket – Qantas’ cheapest domestic economy offering – is set to rise from $99 to $119.

That’s in addition to any difference between the original fare and the ticket price of your new flight, of course.

Cancelling a Qantas Red E-Deal ticket will see the original cost of the booking issued as a Flight Credit, but with a $119 charge (which will be levied when the Flight Credit is redeemed).

The more expensive Qantas Flex economy fares will continue to allow the name of the traveller to be changed, but for $119 instead of $99.

There’s no cost to change a domestic Flex economy fare, nor to cancel that trip and have the ticket cost held as a Flight Credit against a future Qantas booking.

Cancelling a Qantas Flex economy ticket for a refund, however, will carry a $119 fee.

Qantas will also charge $119 for any change or cancellation to a domestic flight in premium economy class – an option restricted to the Sydney-Perth and Perth-Sydney legs of Qantas’ flights to Paris (QF33/QF34) and Rome (QF5/QF6).

Once again, the airline says while these changes will go ahead they are set to be rolled out at a later stage.