So what are these for? Butterfly backstroke breaststroke and freestyle.
Are we gonna win more this year? Yes!
Morning good morning everyone it's a
beautiful morning in Melbourne actually you remember do you guys remember I used to
start every video saying hello flying friends
hello again flying friends, flying friends I'm flying friends.
I don't do that anymore let me know if you want me to bring that back happy to do
that again. Sadly we're not actually flying today I've got a bunch of errands
that I need to run around Melbourne but whilst I'm doing that I wanted to chat
you about something which is gonna be a little bit tricky to talk about bearing
in mind how much I love Qantas. But I think it needs to be said. Actually got
quite a lot of travel booked this year already and that's part of the point of
this video is there's quite a few trips coming up. In just under two weeks time
gonna be out in Sri Lanka spending some time over there in Colombo and also
hopefully heading out to the Maldives as well which I've never been to before. But
the main point of telling all this is because this was all booked through a
double status credits promotion that Qantas had. So windy this morning
probably a good thing we're not flying actually. This is then gonna be a story
about status credits now well to be technical this is a story about frequent
flier miles but how status credits are really
important to help you get the most frequent flyer miles that you can for
every flight that you're doing. But before I get into too much detail here's
a really quick he's a really quick 30-second overview with very expensive
graphics explaining what exactly are status credits.
When you fly from here to
here you earn frequent flyer miles for every mile that you fly. You also
earn status credits for the same leg. Now when you earn status credits and over 12
months the more flights you do and the more status credits you earn determines
which status credit tier you end up at. But the trouble is if you don't get to a
certain level by the time your year ends your points reset to 0 again and you're
back to 0. A big thank you as well to my daughter who did provide the graphics
and the artwork for that sequence. And the plane! And the plane.
That's the real reason why we're not flying today because I blew the budget
on that amazing demonstration and all those graphics.
So why collect status credits and frequent flyer miles well it's twofold
status credits are great because you obviously get the benefits that come
with the different levels of status. So for example if you get gold with Qantas
you can get into all of their lounges in the airports around Australia and around
the world and you don't have to pay so you save that seven six hundred dollars
however much it is for the annual fee. You go up another tier you go up to
platinum you get access to all the first class lounges around the world as well.
But let's not forget the goal here at the end of the day is frequent flyer
miles that's what we want here that's what you can exchange to actually go
places you can exchange to get upgrades. And as you know with my obsession with
travel and flying that's kind of my objective here. But the higher your
status credit level the more frequent flyer miles you get for the same flight.
Let me give you an example if you do a normal flight which is going to earn you
a thousand frequent flyer miles at the bronze status you'll get a thousand
miles for that flight if you go up a tier and you get silver status you
get a fifty percent bump on top. Gold gets seventy five percent on top and Platinum
actually gets a hundred percent so you get double the points for the same
flight that you're doing if you're a bronze frequent flyer compared to if
you're a platinum frequent flyer. Also side note, it is really hard to say
frequent flyer so many times in the video apologies if I've said flequent a
lot of times I think I'd I think I did. Also realized I really need a haircut
there's a place over there I might go Anyway the point of this video is that I
want to warn you about something you may not otherwise know with status credits
and that is to do with when you take a flight and when you actually earn those
status credits to your account and the timing of when you take a flight and
when those status credits come into your account is critical.
This is not a sponsored video for Abacus they're just a very good coffee shop in
Melbourne and I got my coffee unnecessary pastry. So status credits now
the thing that you need to be aware of the thing that caught us out is when you
book a flight and you're expecting to get status credits as a result of that
flight especially when you're booking it during some kind of promotion and in our
case it was the double status credits promotion, you need to expect that those
status credits are going to appear in your account a fair time after you've
actually touched down. Now this caught us both by surprise because I fly a lot
between Sydney and Melbourne domestically right you get 10 status
credits between Sydney and Melbourne they appear in your account pretty much
by the time you leave the airport. Double status credits is different. When you're
expecting those status credits to come in so you can go up a tier before a
certain point in time you need to make sure that any bookings you're making are
made well before your year's going to end. So in our example we booked that
flight remember when I went to Singapore recently and I was doing that flight in
Seletar and we landed on January the 23rd and Jack my wife's status credit
year expires at the end of January. So there were seven days between landing
and when she was hopefully going to go up a tier. But because those status
credits didn't come in time she didn't actually get that upgrade to the next
tier. Now we followed up with Qantas obviously and we've spoken to them about
this and I will be honest Qantas have been really good in this whole thing.
They're looking at it for us and they're investigating what's going to
happen and we don't know either way whether she's going to get that upgrade
to the next tier. But I thought it's important so you guys know that if you
are relying on status credits to get yourself upgraded from one tier to the
other just make sure that you make that booking well before your year ends
because there's likely to be a delay between your wheels touching down and
the status credits actually appearing in your account. Okay more on that in a
second but first it's my daughter's swimming carnivals she's in the district
swimming carnival for her school so we need to go cheer her on.
I love Melbourne you know if there's one thing we're not short of
here in Melbourne its wide-open spaces. Look at this it's a vloggers dream it
gets you away from all the public on the street who's staring you when you're
pointing a camera at yourself. So what are what are my tips then knowing all
that what are my tips on if you are trying to look to build your status credits and
you don't want to get pinged with an issue like this? So number one don't do
what we did and book a flight which gets you to your destination a week
before your status credit year is up because that's obviously two close as
we proved in our situation. My second bit of advice is if you are gonna book and
if you have booked and if your status credit year is coming to an end and you
haven't got your points go to customer service before your year ends. I think
honestly the longer you leave it the less chance you're gonna get of actually
getting those status credits approved to your account. And my final tip if you
have earned points and you haven't seen them in your account yet there's a
facility where you can jump online and you can put in a points claim request so
that's where you... I just spat on the lens. So you've put in the claim for your points
you've reached out to customer service you've basically done everything you can
to remind the airline that you want to get those status credits. If anyone out
there is watching this who's actually from the airlines and has come across
this situation before and has got some additional tips for travelers leave a
comment in the comments below and you can kind of give us your official line
on what we should be doing as passengers to make sure this doesn't happen to us.
And next up on the channel well we've got another couple of flights coming up
in the Cirrus the SR22 is going to get another workout. I'm trying to take it
down to an airfield that I was told never to land at that should be an
interesting one if I can get permission to go in there. Also want to take the
SR22 overwater I want to try and get it down to King Island and that's about
half an hour over water but I haven't told my missus that so that's between
you and me okay.