Qatar Airways has just made changes to the redemption fees that it charges when booking award tickets. We’re not talking about change or cancelation fees, but rather about the carrier imposed fees you have to pay in cash when redeeming Avios.
Qatar Airways updates redemption ticket surcharges
In the past couple of years, we’ve seen Qatar Airways make significant changes to how it releases award availability. Back in the day, the program released the same amount of award space to all partner programs as it did to its own Qatar Airways Privilege Club members, so redeeming on Qatar Airways was a real sweet spot of programs like American AAdvantage or Alaska Mileage Plan.
That’s no longer the case, as nowadays Qatar Airways makes most premium cabin award space available exclusively to those accruing Avios currencies, whether it’s Qatar Airways Privilege Club or British Airways Executive Club.
That hasn’t been the worst thing on earth, since fortunately redemption rates for Qatar Airways premium cabins have been quite attractive. Furthermore, Avios are at least really easy to accrue with transferable points currencies.
One downside to redeeming Avios for travel on Qatar Airways is that this comes with some redemption surcharges. As of today (Sunday, September 15, 2024), Qatar Airways has changed how it charges fees on reward tickets. While they were previously charged based on the number of segments flown, they’re now charged based on the distance flown.
The airline states that surcharges on some rewards have decreased in cost by up to 15%, some have remained unchanged, and some have increased. As you’d expect, the more distance you travel, the more expensive a redemption will be in cash.
Note that these redemption fees apply when booking through Qatar Airways Privilege Club or British Airways Executive Club, or any other program that passes on surcharges. Programs like American AAdvantage and Alaska Mileage Plan don’t pass on surcharges.
So, what are fees like under the new system?
- A Male to Doha to Miami business class award now comes with a $250 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
- A Jakarta to Doha to New York business class award now comes with a $250 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
- A Chicago to Doha business class award now comes with a $200 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
- A Perth to Doha first class award now comes with a $200 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
- A Frankfurt to Doha to Bangkok economy class award now comes with a $90 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
Note that when Qatar Airways first started rolling out these updates overnight, the airline erroneously showed higher costs than intended, and that has now been fixed. So the pricing you see now should be accurate, and in line with what the airline intends. For example, earlier I saw some routings with $500 surcharges, and those have now been lowered to $250. So it’s at least good news that this isn’t as bad as we first suspected.
I’m not a fan of the redemption surcharge concept
I’d say these changes to Privilege Club redemption rates are moderately bad, though honestly, at least they weren’t worse, as we had initially feared. For the most part, we’re seeing increases of no more than $50-100 one-way, and not all routings are going up in price.
However, I can’t help but be frustrated by the general existence of these surcharges. While it’s not uncommon for some airlines to pass on carrier imposed surcharges on award tickets, typically those surcharges reflect the ones that would be charged when booking a revenue ticket. In the case of Privilege Club, though, these fees don’t even reflect the carrier imposed surcharges on revenue tickets, but rather it’s a redemption fee.
These fees aren’t actually based on anything, they’re just intended to improve the economics of redemptions for the airline.
It just seems odd to essentially make every award booking a cash & points redemption of sorts, where you’re charged some arbitrary cash amount in addition to the Avios. On the plus side, at least Qatar Airways’ surcharges remain downright reasonable, compared to what Emirates charges on its Skywards redemptions.
Bottom line
Qatar Airways has just adjusted the cash fees it has on award redemptions. These fees have gone from being segment based to being distance based, so you can expect that awards covering a longer distance will be more costly than before. This applies when booking through Avios currencies, whether it’s Qatar Airways Privilege Club or British Airways Executive Club.
There’s still lots of value to be had with Qatar Airways Privilege Club, as the redemption rates are reasonable, and it’s also easy to rack up Avios.
What do you make of Qatar Airways adjusting its redemption fees?
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