Points taken: the truth about rewards

Can hopping between credit cards really boost your frequent flyer haul and give you cheap or free travel - or is it doing more harm than good behind the scenes? Money puts it to the test.

- NICOLA FIELD

Earlier this year I holidayed in Japan, arriving home, happy but broke, to the exciting news that one of my kids will be getting married in late 2024 in Dubai. That leaves me needing to fund a return flight using as little cash as possible.

Short of selling a kidney (both of them being decidedly worse for wear courtesy of Tokyo's excellent restaurants), I checked out the possibilities of scoring free flights by signing up to credit cards offering bonus frequent flyer points.

The strategy sounds simple. Sign up for a card, score the points, ditch the card, take out a new card, repeat.

Gaming the system this way is known in the banking industry as card churning or hopping. It's not illegal. But does it really stack up? Here's what I discovered.

For context, a Qantas economy return airfare from Sydney to Dubai costs around $2000. To make the trip using Qantas Frequent Flyer points I'd need about 172,000 points for each leg, or roughly 344,000 points in total.

There is no shortage of cards offering bonus points as a sign-up deal. But banks rarely give away anything for free, and cards offering supersized points typically come with a hefty annual fee.

As our table shows, the Qantas Premier Titanium is hard to beat for upfront points (150,000). The catch is that to be eligible you need to earn at least $200,000 annually. Let's just say that counts me out.