Guest Speaker Phil Devlin NZ Head of Frequent Flyer at Qantas

Thanks to Phil, we now know that Qantas is one of the oldest airlines in the world (some 98 years in fact) and they have been operating in NZ continuously for over 80 years, two years longer than Air New Zealand!
 
Via his engaging presentation, we learned that the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme has been running for 30 years this year, and has just under 12 million members with some 10,000 new joins per week.  Phil touched on how points and credits can be earned and utilised via store rewards, or for flights, with 11 airlines to now utilise.
 
Phil talked about how loyalty programmes have become a huge business, particularly in NZ.  We have three major loyalty programmes in contention:  Fly Buys, AA Smartfuel and Air Points.  There is a lot of movement within these three programmes who battle it out for a staggering $61 million market. 
 
Qantas is made up of three main businesses, Qantas, Jetstar and Qantas Frequent Flyer.  Phil advised that Jetstar offer some 500 domestic flights in NZ a week, over 11 routes, to nine destinations and was quick to point out that despite some negative publicity, the majority of Jetstar’s flights did get off the ground.  He was also happy to announce that from March 2018, Qantas will be offering a connecting flight from Auckland, to Perth and on to London.
 
Qantas are the official partner airline of the current British and Irish Lions Tour and thanks to Phil’s generous spot prizes we also learned that Qantas stands for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services and employ around 1300 staff in NZ.