Nick recently found a great deal using Qatar Avios to fly JetBlue’s lie-flat business class “Mint” to the Caribbean which he wrote about here.
For those who prefer how-to videos for these somewhat technical award booking tricks, he filmed a quick video walk-through of the award search and booking process. As you’ll see in the video, he starts by using a tool called ITA Matrix. This tool can look a bit intimidating but as you’ll see in the video, it’s actually super easy if you have a little guidance.
Here’s some of what you’ll find in the video with timestamps to skip directly to a specific part within YouTube.
0:40 – Make sure you have a route in mind that has Mint service. (Just google “JetBlue Mint Routes” for instance.)
0:57 – Visit Matrix.itasoftware.com and do a one-way search with your route details. (JFK to AUA would be New York City to Aruba, for example.)
1:30 – Check the “Show Advanced Controls” button.
1:40 – Add the routing code “C:B6” which tells the matrix you want to limit the “Carrier” to JetBlue, since B6 is JetBlue’s carrier code. You can find an airline’s carrier code with a simple google search.
2:28 – Add the extension code “F BC=I” which sets the fare basis code to Mint. This is also something you’ll have to do some googling to find. But for the purposes of a JetBlue Mint search, you would use this code we’ve provided.
3:03 – Select “See calendar of lowest fares”.
4:10 – If a price shows up on the calendar, that means there’s availability on that date. So then you can find this same result by searching Qatar’s site for award availability and matching the details to what you’ve found in the ITA Matrix.
5:34 – If the “award search” option isn’t showing up on Qatar’s website, try using the Qatar Airways app. (This is a bug we run into occasionally.)
6:32 – Find the flight that matches what you’d pulled up on ITA Matrix, and confirm that business class is available.
Let us know if you learned something new in this walk-through video!
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Is this dead? I follow the steps and find availability on Matrix but neither Qatar website nor their app can find any seats… did Qatar axe this?
I just tried JFK-AUA and it worked fine. Found 2 dates in June and 3 in August
I don’t know why it won’t work for me… found October 12 SXM-JFK using this method… but nothing on Qatar website or app.
🙁
JetBlue own price is not terrible on that day… 39.2k points. may be worth splurging for the experience.
Hmm. Just replicated your experience. I found Oct 12 and 19 via ITA Matrix but neither shows up on Qatar’s app or website. I wonder if a chat agent would be able to see it?
I tried chatting on the app but the agent could not find availability.
Found another oddity…. on matrix I can find GND-JFK on Dec 21 using this method… but Qatar wants 74k Avios for the flight… not sure why.
I think there might be more restrictions beyond this or QR needs to enable specific routes – I see nothing on AUA-JFK, for example, despite lots of I availability.
Thanks! Is I the only fare class book able with points? Trying to find SEA to JFK and didn’t find anything but they definitely have other mint fares available.
Has Qatar completely eliminated the ability to book JetBlue between NYC and either Paris or Amsterdam on Avios? I can’t even search those cities on the Qatar app under JetBlue partner redemptions. It doesn’t matter the dates – the cities can’t even be put in. NYC to London is still searchable at least.
I’m hoping this is maybe a system error, but live chatting with Qatar was a waste of time – they were trying to convince me JetBlue doesn’t fly these routes.
I can find it just fine searching on Qatar home page and checking off “Book an award flight”
You shouldn’t go look under JetBlue partner redemptions but instead go to the main booking screen in the app and click “Book an award flight”.
Thank you! And thank you for the comprehensive post. Worked great for me once i followed all the instructions (and looked far enough out on the calendar).
This was a great video. Thank you. I’ve been watching more content on how to use ITA Matrix, and this added a bit to my knowledge.
Guys,
Off topic but Turkish is already starting to price with the new chart. Do a search from DXB –> NYC. Already priced at new rate 🙁
Yep, and it seems no reductions of taxes and fees (I just looked for IST flights), so…bummer.
Tried multiple dates/routes from ATL with no luck, even with using the routing code, no Jetblue options. Thanks for the walkthrough though!
JetBlue doesn’t fly any non-stops from ATL to the Caribbean.
As Lantean says, they don’t fly any routes to the Caribbean nonstop from ATL, so when you put in C:B6, you’re not going to get any results because that tells the tool to only search nonstop on JetBlue. If you wanted to see results with connections, you’d need to enter C:B6+ — but then I’m not sure whether there is any sort of married segment logic that will affect that in terms of Qatar being able to book it.