A month ago, Qatar Airways dropped the surprising news that they’d be moving their Privilege Club program over to using Avios – the rewards currency for British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia and Vueling.
They’d stated that this change would be happening in late March and it looks like March 22 counts as late March because that change has come into effect today. That’s great news because it’s opening up some potentially great award booking options if you want to fly in Qatar’s QSuites product.
Thrifty Traveler noticed that when booking QSuites flights to Doha with British Airways Avios it only cost 70,000 Avios each way, with a surprisingly reasonable cost in taxes and fees. While British Airways normally charges an arm, leg and a few other small body parts for long distance award bookings, round trip tickets from the US to Doha only cost 140,000 Avios and $246.37 in taxes and fees.
That’s about $175 more in taxes and fees than American Airlines charges when using AAdvantage miles to book the same flights.
However, Avios can be much easier to come by seeing as American Airlines is only a transfer partner of Marriott and Bilt, whereas you can transfer to British Airways Avios from American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Capital One and Marriott. You can also now transfer Avios between British Airways and Qatar Airways accounts, meaning that you can transfer Citi ThankYou points to Qatar and then move across to British Airways, thereby making British Airways an indirect transfer partner of Citi.
Something worth noting is that if you have a British Airways credit card, the up-to $600 in statement credits you get per year that rebate award booking fees won’t be eligible for booking award flights on Qatar. That’s because those fees are only rebated when using your BA card to book BA-operated flights. Still, 140,000 BA Avios plus ~$250 in fees is a great opportunity if you’re interested in experiencing QSuites and want to visit Doha.
Despite using the same currency as British Airways, booking flights on Qatar Airways using Iberia Avios appears to be a non-starter. Not because you can’t book the flights, but because it represents terrible value due to the fees they want to charge. At 140,000 Avios, booking DFW-DOH round trip would cost the same on that side of the equation, but the taxes and fees amount to more than $1,000:
Something else worth noting though is that booking with British Airways Avios is better if you’re planning on ending your journey in Doha. That’s because BA calculates awards based on distance and segments. Let’s say you want to fly from Dallas Fort-Worth to the Maldives in QSuites via Doha. Doing that would be far more expensive:
As you can see, the round trip cost of doing that would be 210,000 Avios plus $538.97 in taxes and fees. That means the round trip cost of flying from Doha to the Maldives is effectively 70,000 Avios plus $288.97 in taxes and fees – not such a great deal. As a result, booking with American Airlines AAdvantage miles (if you have enough) would be the better option seeing as that’d also be 140,000 miles round trip + ~$100 in taxes and fees to the Maldives, but with a much lower cash outlay.
Seeing as Qatar Airways now uses Avios themselves, you might be wondering how much these same awards will cost. Well, Qatar has a handy little calculator on their website that allows you to check.
The problem is that the calculator only advises how many Avios you’ll need to redeem – not how much they’ll also charge in taxes and fees. For example, flying DFW-DOH round trip in business class will cost the same 140,000 Avios that British Airways will charge:
Booking DFW-MLE on the other hand will cost 170,000 Qatar Airways Avios. That’s more Avios than booking with American Airlines (140,000 AAdvantage miles), but fewer than booking with British Airways Avios (210,000).
As mentioned above, that calculator only states how many Qatar Avios you’ll need to redeem – not how much they’ll charge in taxes and fees. Unfortunately they don’t make it easy to find that out.
When doing an actual award search on Qatar’s website, it wouldn’t let me view that information because I didn’t have enough Avios to make the booking.
Update: C H shared in the comments how to view award options on Qatar’s website:
I also got the “You do not have sufficient Avios to proceed with booking” message when trying to go through Privilege Club – Redeem Avios – Book Award Flights. But when I went back to the qatarairways.com home page while still logged in to my account, did a regular search for the route I was interested in, and then clicked the “Book an Award Flight” button above the results, the search results changed to show the prices in miles and copay even though my account doesn’t have the required miles.
That worked for me too. It looks like taxes and fees can be fairly high depending on the route. For example, booking round trip from Dallas Fort-Worth to the Maldives comes with ~$525 in taxes and fees.
Now that Qatar Airways uses Avios, they’re letting you link your account to your British Airways account. That enables you to see your total Avios in one place and transfer Avios between your two accounts – check out this post for more about that.
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Redemptions on QR metal through QR have drastically increased overnight by $100s per route despite the blogosphere reporting they wouldn’t be increasing surcharges. Devaluation for those of us with existing QR miles.
I’m still seeing taxes in the $100-150 range.
I also see very few Qsuites options, mostly 777 with crap biz class out of DFW. Having seen plenty of equipment swap horror stories on FB groups, I’d be weary of blowing my miles on this
I’m seeing the same thing and it’s unfortunate that the increase to fuel surcharges is not being highlighted. This is also a devaluation for those of us who were regularly transferring Citi TY points into Qmiles.
QA in its new avatar seems to have increased taxes on many routes vs what I’ve seen a month or more ago*.
Ex.
BLR-DOH (Economy & Business).
DOH-DUB (Economy & Business).
I was able to transfer Avios from my BA account to my Qatar account. But when I go to transfer the same Avios back from my Qatar account to my BA account, I get the error, “Sorry. The transfer was unsuccessful Unfortunately, we are not able to process your request. Please try again after some time.”
Can anyone please check to see whether they are facing the same issue?
I also got the “You do not have sufficient Avios to proceed with booking” message when trying to go through Privilege Club – Redeem Avios – Book Award Flights. But when I went back to the qatarairways.com home page while still logged in to my account, did a regular search for the route I was interested in, and then clicked the “Book an Award Flight” button above the results, the search results changed to show the prices in miles and copay even though my account doesn’t have the required miles.
Weird that it does it like that, but thanks for sharing that solution – I’ll update the post.
I tried to do that on a ORD-BLR route. Did not change it to miles for me. Page refreshed but came back in USD. Wonder if it is a browser issue.
It still works for me, I’m using Firefox in non-incognito mode.
As for the taxes and fees, the numbers shown in the top row next to the required mileage appear to be a bit wonky. While changing the number of passengers in the search does not change the number of miles in that top row, it does change the amount of taxes and fees that are shown, but not by a multiple of the single passenger results. For a 1 passenger search, it showed 85,000 miles + $170 in that row and for a 2 passenger search, it showed 85,000 miles + $260. Actually selecting flights showed a total of 85,000 miles + $200 in the first case and 170,000 + $400 in the second case, so I’m not quite sure what the amounts shown in the top row represent.
same for me, didnt change to miles. tried chrome and firefox
I plan to sign up this week for a Qmiles account to enable transfers down the road. Plus they’re giving out 2,000 avios to sign up by the end of March with promo code JOINPC1.
Thanks for the heads up about that promo. It was too late for me, but it meant my wife just earned 2,000 bonus Avios.
I remember once upon a time, to xfer to BA, you needed to have an account open for 3 months before trying to transfer. Does anyone know if that’s still the case, or does that caveat no longer apply?
I remember that too. Why don’t u try to transfer 1k points to See.
Just applied for a BA card, been 2 cards in 2 years total Hmmm.