The seat bunfight between Qantas and Virgin might be ending but at least that makes frequent flyer points more valuable.
Both airlines are incurring huge losses and without getting into who started when the fact is Qantas was adding twice the seats to Virgin's every new one. And they had to be sold at a discount to get bums on them.
Not all the extra capacity was from spanking new planes either. I swear every time I fly, which isn't all that often, the leg room has shrunk even faster than I have.
Even so it's a huge fixed cost which can only be, well, fixed by offloading planes, cancelling flights or generating as much revenue as possible by filling more seats, all of them taking time.
But once the over capacity is cleared and we return to the bad old days of a cosy duopoly, say goodbye to discounted domestic airfares as we've come to love them.
Which brings me to the curious case of how, amid their huge losses and discounting, frequent flyer schemes are singularly profitable for both airlines. It's as if the more freeloading frequent flyers on a flight, the more profitable it is.
Who'd have thought? In which case why is getting a frequent flyer seat so hit and miss?
Well it's the sale of the seats to reward program suppliers that's so lucrative, not the passengers who, warming to free flights, are probably so skint they bring their own sandwiches and drinks.
The schemes boil down to selling seats near full fare to, for example, Woolies for its rewards card, and then more or less controlling when they'll be occupied, with the bonus that passengers supposedly flying for free are up for taxes, charges and a fuel levy. Oh, and a credit card surcharge so you can pay the other fees.**
You have to spend about $16,000 for a typical Qantas flight and $13,800 for Virgin using a rewards credit card according to finder.com.au's expert Michelle Hutchison.
And don't carry over a monthly balance. There's no known loyalty program that can overcome an interest charge of up to 23 per cent.
Flights are usually the best value from credit card rewards, all the more as cheap fares rise.
Hmm, so if you're not using their home brand credit card, should you shop at Coles or Woolies for frequent flyer points?
Depends how often you go. No matter how much you spend Woolies Everyday Rewards doesn't give you points for the first $30 unlike FlyBuys.
If you save all your supermarket shopping for one fling Woolies is better for frequent flyers because the points go to the Qantas program whereas FlyBuys will funnel you to Webjet which Canstar research analyst and frequent flyer Daniel Sciberras says can be "three to four times more expensive than the Qantas or Virgin programs."
Anyway earning points is easy. It's getting the most oomph from them if you want to fly that's the challenge.
Our Canstar man has a handy rule of thumb for getting the most out of your points.
The trick is to check the cheapest fare to your destination, subtract all the taxes and charges and dividing by the number of points you need. That'll tell you the value per point redeemed.
After some dummy bookings he found Virgin is better thanks to a lower fuel charge because the cost is spread among its airline partners.
A typical Qantas domestic airfare costs 16,000 points plus $70 in charges compared with Virgin's 13,800 and $41.
The gap for Sydney-Los Angeles is 2000 points and $702.56 in Virgin's favour.
True, this could all change in a drumbeat. But one thing's for sure, the airlines would be mad to upset their frequently flying golden goose in any way.
And even if they tried, retailers offering reward points could well fly the coop.
