Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
The other day, we reported on the ability to book JetBlue flights with Qatar Avios and later updated the post to note fantastic availability on European routes and the ability to book one-way Mint from Boston to Dublin for just 38,750 Avios and $10.10 (or in the reverse for about ~$40 in taxes). After just hours, Qatar pulled the ability to book these flights and has responded to emails saying that JetBlue bookings are temporarily unavailable. Unfortunately, we may now have an idea why: you can once again submit a manual (email) booking request, but it seems that prices have increased substantially. We don’t yet know this for sure, but it looks like Qatar might be set to unveil a separate JetBlue partner award chart — and it won’t be as appealing as these bookings briefly were.
Prices two days ago vs prices now have increased substantially
Two days ago, I booked Boston to Dublin for 38,750 Avios and $10.10 per passenger for my family of four during Summer 2024.
You can no longer find JetBlue availability via the home page search tool, but you can once again submit the booking request form found here. When Qatar pulled the JetBlue availability from the home page tool, they also pulled the airport codes for those airports JetBlue serves in Europe. As of this morning, if you tried to search Boston to Dublin, you got an error message that “DUB” airport code was not found.
Qatar has updated that and you can now once again search routes like Boston or New York to Dublin but unfortunately the price is now 78,000 Avios one way (H/T to a reader in our Facebook group for pointing this out a little while ago).
That’s nearly double the price from two days ago. Equally disturbing is the fact that the 78K price doesn’t match any of the distance bands on the Qatar Airways award chart.
And unfortunately, all of the other JetBlue routes I searched also featured prices not found on the award chart.
New York to Dublin also rings in at 78K Avios one way.
New York to Paris also prices at 78K Avios.
New York to St Maarten should be 22K Avios, but it is now apparently costs 26K Avios.
The same is true for Aruba.
And unfortunately, transcontinental flights, which were also pricing at 38,750 Avios one-way two days ago, now show yet a different price of 74,000 Avios one way.
None of that bodes well for the future of JetBlue bookings via Qatar Avios. The Caribbean routes may still be a reasonable deal and at 78K the redemptions to Europe won’t be wildly higher than what some other programs charge, but neither is it nearly as attractive as it was.
Bottom line
I want to emphasize that we are still early in this development. I am not aware of any official announcement from Qatar or JetBlue regarding these redemptions. Still, the complete disappearance of these awards from the website and subsequent reappearance with completely different pricing seems to indicate that we’re going to see a separate award chart unveiled for JetBlue flights. That’s going to be disappointing if that is indeed true as I had hoped that Qatar was indeed going to give us a new exciting redemption opportunity as per their partner award chart. On the other hand, I suppose that either availability or price probably needed some sort of adjustment and if this pricing makes these awards more sustainable and maintains wide availability, this may still end up being an attractive option for those looking to fly with a family who can also take advantage of a good transfer bonus.
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Yep. Got bonvoyed by Quatar literally minutes after finding availability on Expert Flyer and transferring in some points. No soup for me…
Diamond extension on ambassador renewal, Wyndham Vacasa, now Qatar JetBlue. When great deals are amplified over and over again by travel blogs, this is the unfortunate result.
“Over and over again” — this was one post (and we were hardly the only ones who posted of course because it was big news). If anything, this proves to me that great deals die whether or not we post them, so it makes sense to share them so that our readers get a chance to take advantage while they are available. And at least in this case, the pricing was available through a search of the home page of the site, it wasn’t anything hidden. You don’t get much more “public info” than that.
FM was the first to share the Qatar Jetblue sweet spot as far as I am aware and proves once again that your team is the best miles points blog out there. My statement about this message being amplified over and over again was in reference to the numerous other blogs on boardingarea which immediately copied and pasted FM’s original post.
They were not the first to report this, if any of this even matters. The price is double so it’s over.
Bloggers ruin everything.
Jetblue/Qatar must read your blog lol
It looks like all availability has been pulled again (I tried to replicate your findings and got no JetBlue availability at all on any of the 4 TATL routes I tested) so perhaps – and I’m trying to be optimistic here – the changes aren’t complete and what was visible for a little bit of time wasn’t correct?
Rookie mistake on my part…. I waited too long to book and forgot a core tenant of the hobby. “Book now and decide if you want to go later”.
Exactly. Glad I jumped on it as soon as I saw it. No reason not to especially with cancellation charge of only $25.
[…] UPDATE: JetBlue ist aus der online Suche rausgeflogen und keine Verfügbarkeit mehr in der normalen Suchmaske gegeben. Gleichzeitig werden nun bei der Buchungsanfrage Page für Partnerairlines für die Strecken höhere Werte (z. B. 78.000 Avios für C von Boston nach Dublin) angegeben. (Danke: Frequentmiler.com) […]
I chatted with an agent yesterday to make a change to a JetBlue flight and was told “We are nit able to make any changes on B6 redemption booking until 09th Nov 23. Due to technical issues our systems are being updated, until then we are unable to assist you with the redemption requests both online and offline”
Guess this was the update.