In July 2026, Qatar Airways’ Privilege Club loyalty program rolled out some major restrictions to redeeming Avios with the currency, specific to the ability to use Avios for others. There’s now some positive news, as Qatar Airways has quietly backtracked… yay!
Qatar Airways backtracks on redemption restrictions
With the Qatar Airways Privilege Club changes we saw a couple of months back, Qatar Airways limited the ability to redeem Privilege Club Avios for other people.
With these changes, if you wanted to redeem Avios for others (even if they’re travel companions), you had to add them in your profile to “My List” or “Friends & Family.” Fair enough, except being able to do that required completing at least one of the two following qualifying activities:
- Accruing Avios to your account by crediting a flight to it, either for travel on Qatar Airways or a partner airline
- Having at least one eligible co-brand credit card accrual transaction
While different programs add different restrictions to redemptions, this was among the most extreme out there. I guess Qatar Airways has realized that, because the company has now quietly eliminated these restrictions.
If you go to Qatar Airways’ website and look at the rules associated with “My List” or “Friends & Family,” you’ll now only see one restriction listed for adding someone to your account. Specifically, it’s that your Privilege Club account must have been created at least 30 days prior. That’s it.
Also, in practice it appears to be possible to add people to these lists again if you don’t meet the previous eligibility requirements, so that’s a reflection of how things have clearly changed.
I’m happy Qatar Airways came to its senses
Of course airlines use their loyalty programs to strategically further certain goals. The most common reason we see airlines introduce a “list” requirement in order to redeem for others is to prevent fraud, given the huge underground market of rewards brokers.
However, Qatar Airways’ restrictions were a step too far, in my opinion. Look, I totally get how the airline would like everyone to open a co-branded credit card, or credit a flight to Privilege Club. However, there’s a point at which restrictions like this do more to damage business than help.
Ultimately Privilege Club presumably partners with some transferable points currencies because it sees financial upside to this arrangement, even for those who might not otherwise credit a flight to the program. After all, lots of people may move over points, and then not actually redeem for a long time, but Privilege Club still gets paid.
My guess is that the program saw a decrease in points transfers and other activity, and that’s not good for those running the program. Executives want to be able to show continued growth, and these kinds of rules are counterproductive, for those purposes. So I’m happy to see they’ve learned from their mistakes.
Bottom line
Qatar Airways Privilege Club has backtracked on its extreme policy of restricting award redemptions for others to those who have credited a flight to the program, or have a co-branded credit card.
Obviously Privilege Club was hoping it would see a big increase in those activities because of that new policy, but I imagine that didn’t make up for reduction in other activity (points transfers, account sign-ups, etc.). I figured this policy would be dropped sooner or later…
What do you make of Privilege Club backtracking on this redemption restriction?
Technically speaking, there wasn’t a requirement to earn miles by flying and credit them to QR. Buying a chocolate at duty free at DOH airport was enough…
Its going to be tough to see ME3 carriers gain traction in a world that has such volatile events right in their countries. This is the least they can do.
That really is the ‘elephant in the room,’ isn’t it. Qatar (and the other Gulf carriers) should’ve been removing restrictions (not adding them). Sheesh, given the security concerns, they should be running ‘hot deals’ to get people to come back!
So thankful! I did the BA 250 points / dollar deal. Got 250k miles for $1k spend and got $250 back in selling the product so only spent $750 in the end. Unfortunately, I did it quickly at 1am on my phone and logged into my dad’s BA account (that I manage) by accident. I didn’t have them labeled well as I don’t use BA often… Oops. But I didn’t think anything of it until...
So thankful! I did the BA 250 points / dollar deal. Got 250k miles for $1k spend and got $250 back in selling the product so only spent $750 in the end. Unfortunately, I did it quickly at 1am on my phone and logged into my dad’s BA account (that I manage) by accident. I didn’t have them labeled well as I don’t use BA often… Oops. But I didn’t think anything of it until they came out with that rule and had to pivot on my plan to use the points to a lesser option. But now I can go back!
Just a bummer that I missed that big award release they did back in late July. I managed to snag 1 J LAX-DOH for May but didn’t have enough points in my personal account for the other flights I’m watching.
Given the brokering issues. I’m not surprised they had big limitations.
Can you please, make your own research and tell us why we no longer can find Avios seats from Qatar to the US for 70K ?
All redemption seats are 140k Avios now, all year around.
Ben, once you’re done making your own research and telling us why we can’t find cheap Avios seats, could you please make me a cheeseburger with a side of fries and tomato sauce?
Unfortunately this is similar to all OW partners. I’ve seen DL style prices through AS for QR for a while. It’s a lot of phantom space too.
Good luck.
If you want a seat, you’ll redeem the points. There’s no point whining about it, that’s what it costs now.
Are you maybe searching for 2 people as it’ll show you the price for all passengers. I went to seats.aero and even the free version shows a seat DOH-YUL Nov 4 on a partner at the lower rate. I logged into Qatar, and sure enough, 70k business class.
Good find, FrozenKiwi. Unfortunately, that’s an outlier; there used to be greater availability like Hamza was hoping for, but it’s really hard to find these days.
It started around June this year. All through the previous 12 months I was monitoring QR space DXB-DOH-IAD/JFK and it was consistently there, for 2 people per flight, at 75k per flight. Starting in June this year, it just disappeared and options were only available at 150k.
After I had to take a daytrip to Nantucket and credit it to QR to book tickets home for my family next summer. Well I suppose I didn’t HAVE to do that but it was a fun way of doing it! Glad they removed the restrictions though
I was so excited to see this, but back when these restrictions went in place I signed my husband up for a QR privilege account so I could eventually credit an AA flight. Now I see that you can’t add someone to your list that’s a privilege club member already. WTH, I thought this was about preventing fraud. Makes zero sense
You can add a privilege member to My List and a non privilege member to the Friends and Family list. So 2 different lists, depending if the person you want to add is a privilege member or not.