What new airline alliances mean for you (and your frequent flyer points)
Beyond Muscat is a heroic landscape of forts and toothy mountain ranges, where an intricate system of irrigation has created a web of startling green oases. Local tour operators offer expeditions from Muscat to take in the desert towns, the towering dunes of the Wahiba Sands and the lost-in-time landscape of the Hajar Mountains. Australian passport holders benefit from visa-free admission to the Sultanate of Oman for stays of up to 14 days.
I flew with Oman Air in March, business class return from Delhi to Cairo, and although these were relatively short flights aboard the airline's 737s, with no fully reclining seat, the aircraft, amenities, service and food and beverage were all on par with the stars of the Middle East triumvirate. An 11-hour layover at Muscat's airport was pain-free. This is arguably the best international airport in the region – quiet, calm and well supplied with relaxation areas.
This is the second airline to join the alliance this year, after Fiji Airways became a full member in April. The Fijian national airline was previously a 'Oneworld Connect' member, which allowed Qantas frequent flyers to acquire and spend points with the airline, but full membership brings extra benefits, such as admission to Oneworld lounges when travelling aboard Fiji Airways.
Ways to boost your frequent flyer points
Get a co-branded credit card
Loading
A co-branded card issued jointly by a credit card issuer and an airline is the best way to accelerate your points-earning power because they earn points with a specific airline rather than reward points, which convert to airline points at a lesser rate. For example, the Qantas American Express Ultimate Card earns 2.25 Qantas points per dollar spent on eligible Qantas products and services, and 1.25 Qantas points on everyday purchases per dollar.
The American Express Qantas Business Rewards Card comes with two Qantas points per dollar spent on Qantas products and services, 1.25 Qantas points on everyday business spend and 0.5 Qantas points on government, utilities and insurance per dollar. Both cards come with a huge points bump by way of a sign-up bonus.
Use airline shopping malls
Airlines have online shopping malls featuring preferred merchants whose merchandise ranges from fashion labels to sporting goods, technology and office supplies. You pay the same price as if you were shopping direct with the merchant, but you earn extra points, often at a rate better than one per dollar.
Bank your points with the alliance that best suits your needs
Airline alliances expand your travel opportunities. Frequent flyer points accrued with one airline can be used to buy seats or upgrades within the alliance in most cases, which gives you a far greater choice of destinations when you want to spend your loyalty points. There are also perks and privileges that apply at each alliance membership level, bringing benefits such as speedier check-in, priority luggage handling, preferential boarding and upgrades, and lounge access across the alliance member airlines.
Loading
There are three airline alliances, but for most of us, the ones that matter are Star Alliance and Oneworld. As a Oneworld member airline, Qantas allows flyers to use their points for flights on 14 other airlines including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines and Qatar Airways. While it is not a member of any alliance, Virgin Australia flyers acquire Velocity points and status credits that can be used for flights and upgrades on partner airlines including Singapore Airlines, United, ANA, Air New Zealand and Qatar Airways.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Canberra Times
3 minutes ago
- Canberra Times
Childcare safety failures are a shock, how we respond shapes us for years to come
Test your skills with interactive crosswords, sudoku & trivia. Fresh daily! Your digital replica of Today's Paper. Ready to read from 5am! Be the first to know when news breaks. As it happens Get news, reviews and expert insights every Thursday from CarExpert, ACM's exclusive motoring partner. Get real, Australia! Let the ACM network's editors and journalists bring you news and views from all over. Get the very best journalism from The Canberra Times by signing up to our special reports. As it happens Your essential national news digest: all the big issues on Wednesday and great reading every Saturday. Sharp. Close to the ground. Digging deep. Your weekday morning newsletter on national affairs, politics and more. Every Saturday and Tuesday, explore destinations deals, tips & travel writing to transport you around the globe. Get the latest property and development news here. We've selected the best reading for your weekend. Join our weekly poll for Canberra Times readers. Your exclusive preview of David Pope's latest cartoon. Going out or staying in? Find out what's on. Get the editor's insights: what's happening & why it matters. Catch up on the news of the day and unwind with great reading for your evening. Grab a quick bite of today's latest news from around the region and the nation. Don't miss updates on news about the Public Service. As it happens Today's top stories curated by our news team. Also includes evening update. More from Court and Crime Sue Morphet is the former chief executive officer of Pacific Brands and past president of Chief Executive Women. Now, more than ever, Australia needs a robust, universal early childhood education system that supports women's workforce participation, economic and community prosperity, and ensures our children get the best start in life. This progress remains vulnerable and requires ongoing commitment. The gains Australian women have made in workforce participation didn't happen by chance; they resulted from deliberate policy choices that strengthened entire communities. In crisis, the temptation is to abandon what seems broken rather than fix it. But our early learning system is too important to abandon. We need better oversight, routine quality assessments, fairer wages and more support for our dedicated early educators. The overwhelming majority deserve our respect, not suspicion. This system needs serious reform. New powers to strip funding from failing providers must be the beginning, not the end. We must see early childhood education as essential infrastructure, like our schools and hospitals, vital to thriving communities. Real flexibility requires structural reforms: universally accessible paid parental leave shared between partners; targeted tax reforms to reduce effective marginal rates that discourage women from increasing their hours; and most importantly, building a universal early learning system where access isn't determined by postcode or income. Ideas such as replacing early learning support for families with tax deductions might sound like flexibility, but they're a mirage. They disproportionately benefit higher-income families and fail to help those most in need of safe, affordable early education. Nonetheless, we've failed to utilise our single biggest untapped resource: scores of qualified Australian women, over 140,000 of whom still cite early learning costs or availability as barriers to working more. We're leaving this immense talent base on the table at a time we absolutely cannot afford to. Every economist in the country has been warning us about the slump in our national productivity. Our economy is crying out for talent, facing critical skills shortages across every sector. According to the Grattan Institute, even a modest 2 per cent increase in women's workforce participation would inject over $11 billion into our nation's economy. Deloitte notes that achieving gender equality would grow our GDP by over $128 billion. CEW research conducted by Dr Angela Jackson shows that if women participated in our workforce at the same rate as men, we would unlock a million additional workers. Addressing this imbalance is not only fair but economically essential. This paradox is clear in our workforce: around 70 per cent of Australia's part-time roles are filled by women, representing a striking underutilisation of decades of investment in women and girl's education and skills. Yet despite this progress, we still have a very long way to go. Australia ranks 34th globally for women's economic participation, despite having one of the world's most educated female populations . Now, more than ever, Australia needs a robust, universal early childhood education system that supports women's workforce participation. Picture Shutterstock Today, that system enables millions of Australian women to engage in the workforce, benefiting not only individuals but entire communities and our economy. This progress wasn't just awarded to us. Legions of women fought for it. The expansion of access to high-quality early childhood education and care changed that, brick by brick, centre by centre. Too many brilliant women stepped back, their talents lost to our workplaces and economy. Women faced impossible choices: abandon careers they'd spent a lifetime developing or cobble together unreliable care arrangements. I remember starting my career when access to high-quality early learning was virtually non-existent. But we must not let this crisis undo what generations of women fought so hard to build. I understand why many in this moment do not feel confident in our early learning system, and it is clear that major reforms are needed. We're already seeing this pattern emerge, with some calling to abandon the early learning system in favour of subsidising parents to stay home, with everyone understanding that this burden would overwhelmingly fall on women. Societal shocks, as author Naomi Klein has noted, have the potential to be used to roll back progress that takes decades to achieve. Australia now stands at a pivotal moment. The justified rage and anguish families feel is a response to a profound betrayal of our collective trust. All other regional websites in your area The digital version of Today's Paper All articles from our website & app Login or signup to continue reading Subscribe now for unlimited access. Like every Australian, I've watched the early learning safety crisis with heartbreak. Your digital subscription includes access to content from all our websites in your region. Access unlimited news content and The Canberra Times app. Premium subscribers also enjoy interactive puzzles and access to the digital version of our print edition - Today's Paper. Login or create a free account to save this to My Saved List Login or create a free account to save this to My Saved List Login or create a free account to save this to My Saved List
The Age
33 minutes ago
- The Age
A super-sized GST – with a $3300 cheque in the mail for all
All Australians would receive $3300 a year in exchange for accepting a higher and broader GST under a plan which proponents claim would boost the budget by $28 billion a year while driving up the nation's living standards. Before this month's economic roundtable, independent MP Kate Chaney has backed an idea first floated by leading Australian economist Richard Holden to lift the GST to 15 per cent and extend the tax on food, education, health and childcare services and water and sewerage. This would raise an additional $92.5 billion in its first full year of operation, but would be offset by a $3300 rebate to every person over the age of 18 that would effectively erase the impact of the higher GST on the first $22,000 of an individual's annual purchases. The rebates would leave low- and middle-income earners up to $371 a year better off but slug the nation's top 20 per cent more than $2200 annually, costing the government $68.8 billion. That would leave the Commonwealth with almost $24 billion a year to put towards other services, paying down debt or reducing personal income tax levels. Chaney, who has been working with Holden on the concept for the past two years, said the roundtable had to be open to all tax reform options. Loading 'GST is an efficient tax – it is hard to avoid – and with lower- and middle-income groups potentially better off under this proposal, it can be progressive. Unlike personal income tax, it doesn't hamper productivity,' she said. Holden, who on Thursday will release a paper with fellow economist Rosalind Dixon on the so-called 'progressive GST', said the change would benefit younger Australians who under current tax arrangements paid a disproportionate amount of personal income tax. 'Our proposal would make our taxation system more efficient, make our economy more dynamic and provide the impetus for productivity growth,' he said.
The Age
33 minutes ago
- The Age
This must be one of America's easiest – and most stylish
The airport Palm Springs International Airport (PSP), California. The flight Delta Air Lines DL1302 from Palm Springs to Minneapolis. The departure It's not often you fly out of an airport that's less than 10 minutes' drive from the city's downtown area. In Palm Springs, the distance from downtown to drop-off is about three kilometres. Uber and other ride-share services are plentiful and reasonably priced (about $US17 [$A26]). Taxis and public transport are also available. The look The airport is a great example of modernist architecture which has become the trademark of Palm Springs. Architect Donald Wexler designed many of the homes and public buildings that went up in Palm Springs in the 1950s and '60s. The commission to design the airport was a highlight of his career. A sunny, bright Californian ambience is created with indoor-outdoor spaces, palm trees, water features, simple lines and the use of steel and glass. Views of the surrounding mountains give an immediate sense of place. The Sonny Bono Concourse, added in 1999, and named for the late singer, congressman and former mayor of Palm Springs, stays true to the mid-century aesthetic. Check-in Easy, breezy. Either I'm here on an especially chill day or this is one of the easiest airports in the US to navigate. I've checked in online via the Delta app, so all I have to do now is print out a bag tag and use the bag-drop lane to send my suitcase on its way. No lines, no stress. The airport hosts 13 airlines that provide non-stop flights to and from 30 destinations, including seasonal non-stop flights to Washington DC and New York's JFK, yet it feels remarkably uncrowded. Security I'll be travelling on a US domestic flight, but it's still a requirement to show my Australian passport at the security checkpoint. The date set for compliance in the US with the Real ID Act was May 7, this year, so it is now mandatory for all travellers on US flights to show a passport, military ID or other acceptable form of identification. There is no queue at the hand luggage screening machine and I'm on the airside of the airport in about five minutes. Food + drink Plenty of choices, at the usual airport-inflated prices. Coachella Valley Coffee serves local brew, while Nine Cities Craft specialises in craft beer. Food options include Mexican from Las Casuelas Terraza, sandwiches from Fig & Plum and Palm Springs-inspired dishes at Cactus to Clouds. I join the line at a water refill station to top up my bottle. Retail therapy PSP plans a $US2.2 billion expansion to add new features and double passenger capacity. As part of modernisation works, new retail stores have recently opened, stocking quality destination-themed items. Pick up colourful resort wear and spa goodies at Las Palmas Oasis; Hey Joshua is the spot for handmade jewellery inspired by Joshua Tree. InMotion has tech items from Apple, Sony, Bose and other brands. My favourite souvenir is a 'Palm Spraaangs' T-shirt from Uptown Essentials. Passing time Impressive indoor and outdoor art installations are worth a look, including a dazzling glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly, a bronze sundial and a painted bighorn sheep figure. The collection showcases artists of the Coachella Valley and the wider region. Directly on airport property, the Palm Springs Air Museum will appeal to aviation enthusiasts and war history buffs. There are flight simulators, vintage planes and veteran volunteers who are keen to chat. Airport Wi-Fi is fast and free. The verdict
