They don’t call it the American Express Qantas Ultimate credit card for nothing! Designed with serious travellers in mind, it has one of the highest ratios of Qantas Frequent Flyer points to dollars spent $1 = 1.5 QFF points, complimentary travel insurance, and a free return flight every year your account remains open. What more could you ask for!

Frequent Flyer Points

With this card, customers get 1.5 Qantas Frequent Flyer points for every dollar spent on the card on general products and for every dollar spent with the American Express Qantas Ultimate credit card in Australia on selected Qantas products and services, cardholders receive 2.5 points. Both represent an excellent ratio of points to spend compared to other frequent flyer cards on the market. There is no cap on those points, nor is there an expiry date, so cardholders can save up their points for as long as they like and then cash in on them on a larger scale when it suits them to do so.

Also, the card is particularly useful to new customers at the moment, as they get 5,000 points for their first spend, and 2,500 points after their first card spent on Qantas products and services in Australia.

Points can be redeemed on domestic flights with Qantas, or on international flights with Qantas and its One World Alliance Partners, which includes American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Malév Hungarian Airlines, Mexicana and Royal Jordanian.

Other Rewards

One of the best rewards available with the American Express Qantas Ultimate credit card is that customers get one domestic economy return flight between certain major Australian cities after the first card spend every year in Australia on Qantas services. This represents a huge saving, as most frequent flyer cards require months of spending and then saving thousands of points before redeeming them for a flight. For the sake of comparison, the Virgin Flyer card also offers free flights except with Virgin Australia.

Pros

There are plenty of advantages with an American Express Qantas Ultimate card. Free supplementary cards for the account is just one of them, a great feature for families and businesses alike. The Qantas Ultimate card also comes with free domestic and overseas travel insurance, as well as free travel inconvenience insurance, which protects cardholders against flight delays, missed connections or delayed luggage. However, before you cancel your existing travel insurance policy it would be advisable to carefully check exactly what you are covered for.

Global customer service, global emergency card replacement, and an online fraud protection guarantee are also very useful features of the Qantas Ultimate credit card, as are refund protection and purchase protection (which operates only within 90 days of a purchase).

As well as these aspects, the card also comes with free SMS or email alerts, helping cardholders to keep on top of balances, payments due, and payments received, and adding a further protection against card theft or fraud. There is also an interest free period of 44 days on purchases so if you can pay your balance off in full at end of the month, you won’t have to pay interest.

Cons

The major drawback of this card is its very high annual running cost, which is between two to four times that of other frequent flyer credit cards. Because of this, only customers who fly enough to balance out the high annual fee should consider this card to make it worthwhile.

The free return flight is also only available on routes between select capital cities, which is great if you just want to fly from Sydney to Melbourne, but not so useful if you want to use your local regional airport.

Eligibility

To successfully apply for the American Express Qantas Ultimate credit card, you must be a permanent Australian resident or citizen aged 18 or over, with an annual income of $65,000 and an excellent credit rating. Additionally, if you are self-employed, you must have been working for over a year.

Is This Card Right For You?

This card has great perks and will suit a traveller on a relatively high income. It packs a fantastic rate of rewards per dollar spent and gives you a range of very useful insurance, not forgetting the free flight every year.