Qatar Airways Privilege Club has just massively lowered its partner award costs, without taking anything away. In an era of nonstop award devaluations, this sure is a treat!
In this post:
Qatar Airways’ new partner airline award chart
Qatar Airways is known for being a world class airline, but historically the carrier’s frequent flyer program has been woefully uncompetitive.
In 2022, Qatar Airways adopted Avios as its rewards currency, which represented a huge improvement to the program. This meant that you could freely transfer Avios between the various currencies (British Airways, Iberia, Qatar Airways, etc.), providing lots more opportunities for redeeming points. Unfortunately partner award costs directly through Privilege Club remained uncompetitive… until now.
As of June 2023, Qatar Airways has published a new partner award chart, valid for travel on all of Qatar Airways’ partners. You can find the new distance based award chart below.
As a point of comparison, below is what Qatar Airways’ partner award chart previously looked like.
As you can see, in some cases partner award costs have decreased by over 50%. Previously there were almost no situations where redeeming Qatar Airways Avios on partners made sense, while now there are plenty of cases where it could prove to be valuable.
You can not only redeem Qatar Airways Avios at the above rates on oneworld partners, but also on Bangkok Airways, LATAM, Middle East Airlines, RwandAir, and Virgin Australia.
This new pricing is no coincidence, as this matches British Airways Executive Club’s partner redemption rates, and you can transfer Avios between these currencies. However, there’s huge value with some of the unique, non-oneworld partners.
The catch with Qatar Airways partner redemptions
These new redemption opportunities with Qatar Airways Avios are great, though there’s one major catch. Qatar Airways Privilege Club doesn’t allow partner redemptions online, with the exception of awards on American Airlines and British Airways.
You have two ways you can book partner awards:
- You can phone up Qatar Airways Privilege Club and book by phone
- You can complete a request form for awards online; you’ll see that all flights show as available, and then you can make a request, and it will ticket (eventually) if there is space
There’s huge convenience to being able to book online. Booking an award by phone can be a time consuming process, while the online request form doesn’t work in real time, so availability could change rapidly.
I’d only recommend booking through Qatar Airways Privilege Club on partners that don’t also cooperate with British Airways Executive Club, which allows online bookings for most partners.
Bottom line
Qatar Airways Privilege Club has massively lowered partner award costs. Qatar Airways is essentially aligning its partner award chart with British Airways’ partner award chart, given that both airlines use Avios as their rewards currency.
Now you can redeem Qatar Airways Avios at attractive costs for travel on all kinds of partners. This not only includes oneworld airlines, but also other useful partners, like Middle East Airlines, RwandAir, Virgin Australia, and more.
The only major “catch” here is that most partner awards are only bookable by phone or through a request form, so there’s no way to book instantly online. Still, this could prove useful for a high value redemption.
What do you make of Qatar Airways lowering partner award costs?
Qatar Airways doesnt show any availability for American Airlines. It only shows for BA flights. Looks like their site is not updated.
QR charges a $35 per segment fee for redemptions on QR metal. Ben, were you able to confirm whether these fees also apply to partner awards?
So we can redeem BA via Qatar, but will it still come with the YR surcharge? If not, then calling in might be worth it.
I wonder if Qatar's ff plan shows AA award availability any better than BA's website. I recently had to call up BA because their website wasn't showing award availability from LIH to PHX that I saw on AA.com and Alaska's website. So after checking for a few minutes the rep found 2 seats on the flight I wanted and said that they have been having issues with availability not showing up on their website that should be there.
I didn't think you could book LATAM anymore with Avios once they went to Delta. I got excited when I read this, but I really don't think you can anymore. I hope I am wrong though. Saves a lot of money for same County South American Flights.
I stand corrected!! I just looked again, and they are there!!!
LATAM basically only cut ties with American after Delta bought a stake in them. They still maintained individual ties with other Oneworld airlines. LATAM never joined Skyteam. Only AA was dropped due to them being a direct competitor to DL.
Can you book awards on AA domestic flights using the QR partner redemption rates? If so, that is a great deal!
Yes you can!
How? When I input domestic flights that are available on AA Qatar wants to only route me through London!
It would be nice to have a comparison between the Avios programs. Specifically, I'm thinking about where I should store my Avios. How do expiration policies differ, for example.
Still amazes me how IAG has created at least 4 front-ends to Avios, rather than creating one unified program like Miles & More or Flying Blue. I have sympathy for anyone who has to deal with Iberia Avios, as they are just impossible to deal with.
Good old IB Avios... To be fair I'd rather have them over Skypesos. Heck, I'd even go as far as saying that their 2018 90k-for-300€ promotion was a top 10 miles deal of the past decade, which at least back then was the equivalent of a EU-NA business roundtrip.
The 90k promotion was a top 1 deal for me. I can't think of another miles deal that compares (other than sign up bonuses offered by credit cards which I don't count).
The US Mint
They may be impossible to deal with but they haven't devalued for IB operated flights in years. It's the best deal in town if you can find availability. They also frequently target random accounts for 50% off which is also a smoking deal.
QR comped me to Privilege Club Gold a few years ago when I signed an interline partnership agreement with them and for some reason (pandemic presumably to begin with?) they keep extending my status despite never having credited a single mile to them! I've made a few friends happy by using the annual upgrades to bump them up into QSuites in the meanwhile.
Other than that. Privilege Club is a trainsmash.
Does QR have the special carve out for short-haul North America awards? Because if not, that would represent a sweet spot over BA for flights under 650 miles
Same for intra-Asia flights on JAL and CX.
I don't think so, but after the BA Avios unannounced devaluation for AA metal, QR is a better deal. Keep in mind that the fees are about $10/flight vs $5.60 with BA/IB