Hah: Qatar Airways Now Lets You Earn & Redeem Avios For Private Jets

You would be surprised, but:
1) yes, there is an overlapping market. Some of my clients fly private, unless there is direct first class.
2) I think they have no idea how many Avios they are burning here. Even the staff at QE is surpised about this. Most of them expected 1USD/Avios. If, lets say, a London - New York flight will cost you 100.000USD (if you are lucky), they are giving out 400.000 Avios
3) I think they will generate a lot of business with this

I'm pretty sure bros reviewing this in about 5 years saying "BOOKED: I'm flying private on Qatar Executive!"

With sufficient demand in each direction, Europe to Doha is easy enough to figure. With TATL routes, Qatar would add in potential positioning/deadhead costs. Assuming a typical rate of $12k to $15k per hour for the Gulfstream, backing into a redemption point price, it would probably be around 500k to 600k Avios per hour. Let's see . . . 30% transfer bonus from Amex . . . hmmm.

Fred, Qatar is operating their aircraft on a floating base.
A London - New York will set you back around 100-110k USD

The redemption rates will be interesting.

"Maybe I’ll give them a ring and see how far my Avios balance will get me on a G700."

Why not really do it, I mean, a review of a short 2-3 hour flight from DOH to somewhere nice on a private jet would probably get lots and lots of readership. How much money are we talking here, tens of thousands of dollars? I reckon there can't be many reviews of private jet flights out there so I'm sure it would attract a wide audience.

This would add a new dimension of earning Avios, and I expect also a new dimension in amounts of Avios to be earned per booking. At least I'm not expecting that booking a $50.000 flight will result in 'you get 100 Avios since you booked the cheapest package!'. That would be very much Lufthansa under dr. Franz, not Qatar Airways under Al Bakr.

I'm pretty sure that there's an overlap between those traveling on some private jet and those traveling first class, so I guess that's where these two branches will meet.

Now I really do hope that Lucky will be able to scrape sufficient Avios on his accounts to actually try this, at some point. And then get yelled at for taking photos on board, of course. 😉

There's actually a niche market where people can book seats on otherwise empty positioning flights on private aircraft. I'm surprised Ben hasn't touched on that subject there yet, but on the other hand, it's paid with cash, not miles. Needless to say, it's usually still a few thousand dollars per hour.

The Earning rate isn't anywhere near as good as the LH private jet back in the day 🙂 No Qatar equivalents of the Cessna HONs anytime soon I guess.

The G700 charters for $16-18K per hour and depending positioning, you would have to pay for both directions, so a 2 hour one way flight would end up around $75,000

And I just remembered that Al Bakr stepped down a year ago. That was a Saad day.

How long have you had that stored away?

Price for a London-NYC charter will be cheaper. I paid $110K in height of COVID for a Teterboro - Biggin Hill - Westchester Gulfstream 450 charter. no big baller here, whole bunch of pet parents who needed to move doggies between continents and we split the bill. Would love to have done that on a Qatar jet and picked up 440K avios!

My suggestion is for Lucky to book/charter a Qatar Executive G700 using his Avios from Doha to the Maldives for a week. Given a G700 can seat up to 13, he can hold a drawing for 2 to 5 couples (depending on aircraft weight and range restrictions) to fly as guests. All drawing winners would be responsible for arranging their own lodging in the Maldives. Winston accompanies the group, which meets every other day for lunch or dinner. =)

Have what stored away?

You’d be surprised on the overlap. I fly private (up to Global 7500) when there is not a direct route on a good airline with a good seat when traveling with my family. For solo travel I’m nearly always commercial and it’s all about the points and status - but mostly for earning points on cash tickets to use with the family while earning top status myself to help manage the family travel with additional points transferred from cards.

I don’t know how competitive Qatar Executive is vs. Vistajet, brokers, or NetJets (once you account for aircraft depreciation). I might quote them next time for fun.