Qatar Airways Privilege Club has now officially adopted the Avios ecosystem, dropping Qmiles in the process. If you’re not familiar, Avios is the spendable ‘points currency’ of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling – all part of the International Airlines Group (IAG).
Qmiles have now swapped to Avios at a 1:1 ratio, with the number of miles – sorry, Avios – you need to redeem for flights remaining the same. And best of all, you can even link up your British Airways Executive Club account to pool your Avios balance together.
Privilege Club members enjoy great reward availability and no fuel surcharges for Qatar Airways Business Class, including the famed Qsuites. We certainly see great potential here, as long as Qatar Airways doesn’t devalue other aspects of Avios later on.
So what exactly is changing with Privilege Club?
At this stage, only the spendable ‘points currency’ is changing its name from Qmiles to Avios. Other aspects of Privilege Club, including status earned with Qpoints, will be unaffected. Elite Gold and Platinum members will also hold onto their precious Qcredits, which offer free upgrades on Qatar Airways flights.
You can now link your British Airways account to Privilege Club and see your combined Avios balance – find the link on your dashboard. And if you want to swap your Avios from your Executive Club account over to Privilege Club, that’s easy too. Just click ‘Combine Avios’ and follow the steps to move your balance over.
Qatar Airways tells us you can move Avios in either direction, without any fees. There are no minimum or maximum transaction limits, though both programs will be on the lookout for suspected fraud.
How do I book a Qatar Airways flight with Avios?
The process of booking a reward flight with Avios is similar to before. But hopefully, more of you will be able to do it now that you can transfer Avios over from British Airways. Start off by logging in to your Privilege Club account and visiting the ‘Redeem Avios’ page.
Choose the tab on whether you want to redeem on Qatar Airways/British Airways, or with other partner airlines. Then it’s a simple matter of filling in the flight details for the search.
Using Avios for Qatar Airways Business Class flights represents excellent value because there are no fuel surcharges. For 90,000 Avios and AU$430 in taxes, you can enjoy a Business reward from Paris to Melbourne in Qsuites.
How do I earn Avios from flights?
You can earn bucketloads of Avios from flying Qatar Airways and partner airlines. The amount you should earn is displayed during the booking process on Qatar Airway’s website. But you can also use the Qcalculator to work out how many Avios your next flight will earn.
Unsurprisingly, the higher the fare you book, the more Avios you earn. From Sydney to London, you could earn anywhere from 38,280 to 65,622 Avios on a return Business Class booking! Given a one-ward Business Reward on the same route is 90,000 Avios, those aren’t bad earn rates.
You can enter your Qatar Airways Privilege Club membership number into Qantas bookings to earn Avios. But note you’ll only collect Avios on Qantas international flights, or domestic flights with an international connection.
Why is Qatar Airways switching to Avios?
Qatar Airways is a major shareholder of IAG, even though it isn’t directly part of the company. Back in 2020, Qatar Airways increased its stake in IAG to 25.1%. Avios is a huge ecosystem with oneworld carrier British Airways as a major airline partner. It seems Qatar Airways stands to benefit from tapping into this established network.
Since Qatar Airways switched to Avios, we’ve seen a great increase in Business Class reward seat availability across the network, including more seats being made available to Qantas Frequent Flyer members.
Summing up
Privilege Club is on track to be one of our favourite frequent flyer programs now! Many of you will have Avios banked in British Airways, but you can now transfer them to Qatar Airways and use them for great-value flights. You can also buy British Airways Avios on sale, which might lead to some interesting ‘hacks’ down the track.
Existing Qmiles will swap to Avios at a 1:1 rate, and redemption rates will hold steady at this time. It all looks good so far, so here’s hoping flyers will enjoy more rewards with Avios this year.
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1. How do I get to earn Avios points, where do I need to enrol ? Do I need to open an account in the Qatar Privilege Club ? Or is there an Avios account I need to enrol ?
2. If I fly Vueling or Iberia while in Europe, how do I get it to credit the points to my Avios account ?
3. If I fly Virgin Australia or Qantas, is it better to earn Avios points rather than the individual airline FF program ? Which will give me more bang for my points aside from having more availability. I am enrolled in Velocity, Qantas FF and Krisflyer. I have been fortunate to recently booked rewards on SQ flying to Europe next year before the devaluation happened !
4. Can you also book reward flights for someone using Avios ?
In addition, BA and Qatar Airways will increase the number of Avios-based reward seats across their flights, to accomodate an expected jump in demand once both airlines are sharing a common currency’.