Australian public servants will nonetheless be capable of declare airline standing credit following a overview by the Division of Finance, in a win for Qantas.
As reported by The Australian Monetary Evaluate, Finance has determined towards banning bureaucrats from accruing standing credit on official bookings, however has made it clear that public servants shouldn’t be eligible for promotions providing bonus credit.
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“On 14 November 2025, Finance launched an Method to Market (ATM) to determine a brand new Australian Authorities Air Journey Companies Association. The ATM closed on 23 December 2025, with the brand new panel anticipated to be in place by 1 July 2026,” a Finance spokesperson stated.
“The ATM specified that Authorities Travellers could accrue standing credit for Official Journey, however airways should not present Authorities Travellers with entry to any further standing credit as a part of any promotional, advertising and marketing or incentive exercise.
“The up to date Journey Coverage might be printed on the Finance web site in early 2026.”
The choice is a setback for Virgin Australia, which had argued that public servants with the ability to declare standing credit unfairly benefited Qantas and that eradicating incentives to adjust to “lowest sensible fare” insurance policies would profit taxpayers.
“Our place on standing credit is obvious. The best and best technique to help compliance with the Lowest Sensible Fare coverage is to take away loyalty incentives for taxpayer-funded public servant journey,” a Virgin spokesperson stated.
Qantas, nonetheless, had countered by saying entry to airline standing advantages together with lounges saves the taxpayer “tens of hundreds of thousands” yearly.
A Qantas spokesperson instructed Australian Aviation, “Following session with the Authorities, we launched measures in August final 12 months to make sure Australian Authorities travellers on official enterprise journey usually are not capable of take part in ‘double standing credit score’ promotions.”
Finance’s Report of the Evaluate of Australian Authorities Journey Insurance policies final 12 months discovered that the airways have a truthful cut up of official bookings, in accordance roughly with the share for most of the people, and didn’t advocate banning authorities travellers from claiming standing credit.
As of August 2025, round 3.3 per cent of Qantas bookings and 1.4 per cent of Virgin bookings had been for presidency journey.
Authorities travellers haven’t been allowed to assert frequent flyer factors for official journey since 2010.
