Questions and Answers

Is it true that I can use by British Airways avios points to book a reward flight on Qatar Airways?

If true, how do I see Qatar’s scheduled/redemption availability on BA’s website? Specifically, I want to fly from my LA home to Doha, then to Kilimanjaro. On return, I want to fly from Kigali to Doha to LA. Don’t want to have to go through London. How do I search on BA’s website without getting results showing me flying on BA through London?

Thanks and I love your website and helpful articles.

Hi Mark, yes, British Airways and Qatar are both part of the One World alliance so you can use BA points to book Qatar flights.

You can just go to BA’s website, log in, and choose the “Book a flight with avios” option and search for that itinerary. If you can’t see Qatar flights listed, it’s most likely because there is no award availability on that day and on that route. Award availability can be quite hard to come by from the US anyway.

Alternatively, you can use another One World airline website, like American, to search for availability (it’s a little easier to search on American than BA’s website).

Remember that using Avios you’ll pay for each flight segment separately. It also helps to search for each segment separately if you’re using the BA site to search. You may not find award space on the LAX-DOH segment but perhaps you’d find space on, say, the DFW-DOH segment or from somewhere on the US east coast. You’d then need to decide if it’s worth it to use Avios for the domestic segment or if you’d rather buy that segment with cash. If you do buy that segment separately, remember you’ll need time to claim bags and get them rechecked with Qatar so you’d want to arrive a minimum of three hours before your Qatar flight.