Article: How to Use Qatar Airways Avios

[levelnine]

Is it me or has Qatar drastically reduced their saver reward availability? Pretty much every day now is a Flex Award, this wasn't the case a week ago.

It does appear they've zeroed out a lot of availability into/out of Australia in the last day or two. Probably in anticipation of the influx of Amex points.

 

[Hunter4vr]

It does appear they've zeroed out a lot of availability into/out of Australia in the last day or two. Probably in anticipation of the influx of Amex points.

It's the same case even when looking at flights to/from Asia and looking at less popular European destinations such as Warsaw or Belgrade so I doubt it's all Amex related. No J availability on BA website either.

I changed a few of my bookings for flights 6 months out few weeks ago and was able to see tons of availability everywhere but now it's all gone even when looking 12 months out.

 

[Bringa]

Is it me or has Qatar drastically reduced their saver reward availability? Pretty much every day now is a Flex Award, this wasn't the case a week ago.

Paris Olympics late July could be a reason, many going to Europe.

 

[dsotm]

A couple of flyers over on OzBargains say they have had award flights cancelled by Qatar at short notice. They just had the flights cancelled and points returned with no reason. Has this happened to anyone here?

 

[Mattg]

Paris Olympics late July could be a reason, many going to Europe.

QR did have a general blackout on reward seats to/from Doha during last year's World Cup. So not unprecedented, but also not great.

 

[levelnine]

QR did have a general blackout on reward seats to/from Doha during last year's World Cup. So not unprecedented, but also not great.

I'm fairly certain it is more nefarious than that.

I've been watching QR availability like a hawk for the last month. Up until a few days ago, there was boatloads of availability Australia - Europe — as in, almost every day in March, April, May & early June from select ports. Now there is none.

 

[levelnine]

Further to my reply above, it appears Qatar has pulled award availability across the entire network, so not related to anything happening in Australia:

https://www.reddit.com/r/awardtravel/comments/154u7as

 

[Muppet501st]

Geeze, lucky to have booked J FRA-DOH-BNE just last Wednesday !

 

[PeterG]

Do QR allow a stopover in DOH on a redemptoion booking similar to what SQ do using KrisFlyer miles?
Or is it classed as 2 seperate bookings?

 

[Muppet501st]

Do QR allow a stopover in DOH on a redemptoion booking similar to what SQ do using KrisFlyer miles?
Or is it classed as 2 seperate bookings?

QR redemptions, are worked out per each segment, so you can just book to DOH as 1 redemption and stay as long as you like before your next booking or look,for longer connections

 

[twiningb]

Further to my reply above, it appears Qatar has pulled award availability across the entire network, so not related to anything happening in Australia:

https://www.reddit.com/r/awardtravel/comments/154u7as

FlyerTalk forum for Qatar says it's standard for award availability to be absent for virtually all of July and August, and indeed I noticed a couple of weeks back that the routine availability started to drop off as the calendar opened beyond about 26 June.

It's definitely not just to/from Australia, though.

 

[luxury-lizard]

Before deciding to move AmEx points to QR I've been doing random searches and also not seeing any availability to/from OZ but also on other routes ex-DOH. I've tried other dates in what I think would be low demand (say Nov and May) - also zip. I think I'll wait before changing from SQ to QR.

 

[Hunter4vr]

Before deciding to move AmEx points to QR I've been doing random searches and also not seeing any availability to/from OZ but also on other routes ex-DOH. I've tried other dates in what I think would be low demand (say Nov and May) - also zip. I think I'll wait before changing from SQ to QR.

Yeah I’m really curious what’s going on, all availability for next 12 months is gone.

 

[Human]

Yeah I’m really curious what’s going on, all availability for next 12 months is gone.

Well, we have until 18 August to transfer AmEx points with the 20% bonus. We've got some time to wait and see how things play out and then make a decision next month.

 

[levelnine]

FlyerTalk forum for Qatar says it's standard for award availability to be absent for virtually all of July and August, and indeed I noticed a couple of weeks back that the routine availability started to drop off as the calendar opened beyond about 26 June.

It's definitely not just to/from Australia, though.

This is different. It is not the failure to release new seats. It is the disappearance of existing seats — as in, hundreds of seats on multiple routes — all of a sudden.

 

[Jstr]

Well, we have until 18 August to transfer AmEx points with the 20% bonus. We've got some time to wait and see how things play out and then make a decision next month.

If the goal was to get lots of points transferred, then the pulling of saver J tickets couldn't have come at a worse time for them. I hope they sort this out soon. It just doesn't make sense to try to lure us with a transfer offer but then pull redemption availability at the same time. Who wants to transfer blindly like this? But I suppose most in the general population are probably only interested in the economy redemption. We at AFF here is a pretty select group.

 

[Hunter4vr]

If the goal was to get lots of points transferred, then the pulling of saver J tickets couldn't have come at a worse time for them. I hope they sort this out soon. It just doesn't make sense to try to lure us with a transfer offer but then pull redemption availability at the same time. Who wants to transfer blindly like this? But I suppose most in the general population are probably only interested in the economy redemption. We at AFF here is a pretty select group.

It’s just so odd though as there’s tons of availability in and out of Doha to all European cities but no way to connect to those flights from NA or Aus. Not sure what Qatar is achieving by doing this.

 

[Auski]

Is this an up yours Australia because we won't give them any more slots. Happened at the time of the announcement of no extra slots.

 

[twiningb]

I'm not seeing any standard Avios availability for any long-haul port out of DOH, for June next year (before the peak). There's a smattering for Europe ports, and BKK has some space (~7h), but nothing to HND or NRT or ICN or ADL or MEL. So it's not clearly a retaliation against the Aust govt in particular.

Post automatically merged: Jul 25, 2023

(To be clear: I think the slot denial was bad. The lack of capacity is bad for competition.)

 

[jase05]

With Iberia now joining the QJB it seems like Avios can be moved between all 3 programs and sets up a pretty good partnership.