Qatar has one of the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’ that offer doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space. Their QSuite is a fantastic hard product, and service and food in the air are outstanding.
Right now there’s amazing award availability at the end of the booking window. Specifically you’ll find 2 business class award seats across late August and beyond. You can use this for travel from the U.S. to Doha and onward to the Mideast, India, the Maldives and even to Africa. This award space was first spotted by @findflightsforme.
Qatar Airways has long made award space available in waves, usually booked far in advance. With the launch of Avios as their currency, they committed to release business class awards when opening their schedules. That entrenches the habit of making space available as soon as the booking window opens, for travel nearly a year out. In practice they seem to open space in waves, rather than when each flight loads, so it’s important to be on the lookout for events like this.
Credit: Qatar Airways
Right now there’s wide open business class award space for two passengers to and from Qatar’s numerous U.S. gateways. For instance, here’s a sample of September Chicago, New York JFK, and Los Angeles – Doha with availability sourced via AA.com:
I’d suggest, for what it’s worth, spending a little bit of time in Doha if you haven’t ever been – just enough for a visit to the Museum of Islamic Art.
Even though Qatar Airways publishes space 355 days out, American and Alaska will only give you access to travel 331 days out. That means right now you are limited to award bookings through the beginning of December 2023 if you’re using AAdvantage (or Alaska) miles.
Credit: Qatar Airways
However you can book seats farther out using British Airways Avios (bookable on their website!) or Qatar Airways Avios. And the price of those redemptions has gone down. British Airways is a transfer partner of Chase, American Express, Capital One and Bilt while Qatar is a transfer partner of Amex and Citi. And BA and Qatar have more closely aligned their pricing.
JetBlue also now has Qatar Airways redemptions, and there’s a 25% transfer bonus from both American Express and Chase to JetBlue, though I’ve seen reports that the bonus from American Express isn’t instant.
For instance Chicago – Doha in business class runs 70,000 British Airways Avios plus ~ US$100. Meanwhile Chicago – Doha – Nairobi runs 85,000 Qatar Airways Avios and ~ $200. (In this semi-distance based pricing, traveling all the way to Johannesburg bumps the price by 10,000 additional points.) American AAdvantage charges 70,000 miles to the Mideast or to India and surrounding area, or 75,000 miles each way to Africa.
Have you been able to ticket? Had to put a couple on hold because I haven’t been able to ticket on AA.
@ Gary — Free? Of all people, you know that is false.
There may be many reasons for the decline of air travel on Qatar to the Middle East. First being people do not want to fly through the Middle East or stop in Qatar at this time. And second, they may not want to support Qatar because of the support they are providing to Hamas both financially and by sending oil. In addition, the leader of Hamas and his top aides are being provide a place to live instead of being with their people in Gaza.
The paragraph below needs to be updated to reflect that it is no longer October of 2022.
“Even though Qatar Airways publishes space 355 days out, American and Alaska will only give you access to travel 331 days out. That means right now you are limited to award bookings through the beginning of December 2023 if you’re using AAdvantage (or Alaska) miles.”
AA/AS booking windows extend into October of 2024 at this point.
Can you connect to Europe? ie MUC-DOH-SFO/LAX? Or is that 2 awards? Have to book on Qatar to get the stopover package, right?
@Evan – I am ticketed and even selected seats on the Qatar website.
I jumped on this early morning but hesitated a bit… only available spot for 4 from DOH to SEA for the month of August… 27th departure dissapear right before my eyes. Who is the lucky one?
As long as they give safe harbor to Hamas billionaires,not giving them a dime nor going to that country.
Qatar is punishing its Australian Privelege Club members wishing to get premium awards into and out of Australia. Due to an ill-advised adverse decision for QR by the pig-headed and incompetent Minister for Transport (which I do not support) QR has retaliated by withdrawing 99% of premium cabin awards fro its entire inventory into/out of Australian ports.
This unusual decision was taken in the days of His Excellency Al Bakar; something right on brand for him, where a touch of retribution was not unusual in most circumstances.
(A few random close in awards have been sighted in AA inventory I note.)
“August… 27th departure dissapear right before my eyes”
Well, I’ve been playing this game long enough to know that an award space can dissapear and reappear sometimes so I kept on trying all day long and it just came back. EBB to SEA 75k for 4 of us 8/27. Now I need to figure out how to get there. If this works out, this would be an african safary we always dreamed of…
status shows ticketed.
Qatar is quoting from Europe to US through Doha for 90,000 miles, which I assume is the price that indicates they are “saver” and should be available on partner airlines? But I can’t get either BA or AA to show any Qatar flights, they both show only their own every when the partners option is selected. So are these actually NOT available to partners? Has anyone found them on partner airlines, or just booking direct? It took me 3 hours to create and account and link it to BA (sites kept going down, errors, etc.) but finally ready.
@CSue, the booking I made right above your comment was on aa.com using aa miles. however, AA has it’s own routing rule and I believe you can’t route from NA to Europe via 3rd region middle east. It will be 2 seperate segments, 70k from NA to Doha and like 40k from Doha to Europe. for that to show, you have to book seperately or do multicity but regardless, it will be over 110k. As for BA, again they have their own rule so i suggest you study them first.
Thanks for posting, Gary. AA site was funky yesterday. Had to put my Regional-LAX-DOH-SEZ on hold then use the AA app chat to complete the purchase. Two round trip tickets for 300k including the positioning flights is unreal. Big thank you again Gary
Something is seriously wonky. Booked online to SEZ through Chicago but couldn’t pay for it. Kept erroring out. Then, put it on hold. That worked. Saw the Qatar flights literally disappear online from my held reservation. Tried rebooking through DFK. Same thing–couldn’t pay. Put on hold. That worked. Then Qatar flights disappeared from the held reservation.
For anyone who got this to work, my compliments!
I rebooked an 120,000 QR Biz NRT – Doh to 60,000. I think there’s a $25US cancellation fee but miles repost almost instantly which is a better deal than past 😉
This connects to QR First on CX equipment to Hong Kong for Wing Cabana then CX First to HND. Just need ANA to open up
“First being people do not want to fly through the Middle East or stop in Qatar at this time”
Maybe Bob doesn’t, but we recently converted 100k citi thank you points on the Premier card to Qatar while they had the 30% bonus. Eager to visit Qatar and points beyond, irrespective of what Bob says.