Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

More Avios-earning Qatar Airways £1,000+ business class flights to the Middle East and Asia

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If you have been getting sale withdrawal symptoms, don’t worry! Qatar Airways is back with some more great business class fares out of Europe.

These deals are not as generous as some we saw earlier in the year.  They still represent very good deals for business class travel, however, especially as Qatar Airways has an excellent reputation for the quality of its seats, food and service.

£1,000 to the Middle East is certainly good although admittedly diverting via Europe is hassle for a short route.  £1,100 to Bangkok or Singapore is fantastic value, as is £1,400 to South Africa or the Maldives over peak season.

Qatar 787 350 business class

Remember that Qatar Airways flights earn Avios and British Airways tier points if you add your BA Executive Club number.  Most of the Asian routes below will generate 560 tier points return (140 x 4)!  The Middle Eastern routes, assuming you connect to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, would earn (140 + 40 x 2) 360 tier points return.

As with recent sales, Qatar is discounting heavily from selected cities in Europe.

The best deals appear to be out of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm at the moment.   This is not surprising – Qatar has to fill TWO Boeing 787 aircraft from Copenhagen almost every day in Business Class.  Scandinavian cities are competing against the cheap long-haul pricing offered by Norwegian.no.  Amsterdam is also a small country with big planes to fill.

If you have a particular route in mind, you should also try out other starting points.  Brussels has had some good deals in the past, for example.

Here are the fare rules for the current offers from Amsterdam:

Book by September 10th

Travel before June 28th

No travel inbound between January 2nd – 6th 2016.  There are no stated restrictions on outbound travel.

Minimum stay 3 days, maximum 1 month

The Scandinavia deals are more restrictive, especially if you want to travel over Christmas:

Book by September 6th

Travel before March 31st 2016

No travel between December 10th – 25th 2015 outbound and January 1st – 10th 2016 inbound

Minimum stay 5 days, maximum stay 1 month

Here are some sample prices – remember that these tickets start in Amsterdam (full list here):

Abu Dhabi – €1,400 (£1,022)

Bangkok – €1,470 (£1,074)

Cape Town – €1,885 (£1,377)

Hong Kong – €1,870 (£1,366)

Phuket – €1,660 (£1,212)

Singapore – €2,375 (£1,735)

Tokyo – €2,075 (£1,516)

Zanzibar – €1,555 (£1,136)

Here are some prices from Copenhagen taken from this list:

Abu Dhabi – DKK 10,795 (£1,055)

Bangkok – DKK 13,995 (£1,368)

Cape Town – DKK 19,345 (£1,891)

Delhi – DKK 12,695 (£1,241)

Dubai – DKK 10,795 (£1,055)

Kuala Lumpur – DKK 15,995 (£1,564)

Maldives – DKK 15,995 (£1,564)

Phuket – DKK 16,495 (£1,613)

Singapore – DKK 16,045 (£1,569)

Here are some prices from Stockholm taken from this list:

Abu Dhabi – SEK 13,945 (£1,070)

Bangkok – SEK 15,495 (£1,189)

Dubai – SEK 13,945 (£1,070)

Johannesburg – SEK 22,545 (£1,731)

Kuala Lumpur – SEK 20,245 (£1,554)

Maldives – SEK 22,395 (£1,719)

Phuket – SEK 15,795 (£1,213)

Singapore – SEK 15,895 (£1,220)

Here are some prices from Oslo taken from this list:

Abu Dhabi – NOK 13,045 (£1,013)

Bangkok – NOK 14,995 (£1,165)

Dubai – NOK 13,045 (£1,013)

Cape Town – NOK 18,595 (£1,445)

Kuala Lumpur – NOK 17,145 (£1,332)

Maldives – NOK 18,195 (£1,414)

Phuket – NOK 16,145 (£1,255)

Singapore – NOK 17,195 (£1,336)

Because these fares start in Europe, there are no black-out dates for the UK Autumn half-term holidays.  I had no trouble getting Copenhagen to Dubai to price up from Sunday October 25th to Sunday November 1st, for example, which is half term for most schools.  (Departures on Saturday October 24th were more expensive.)

When booking with Qatar Airways, it is important to NOT just look at the headline price. It is also important to get the right aircraft. You want to be booking onto a Boeing 787 featuring the latest impressive 1-2-1 business class seating which I reviewed here. The A380 and A350 aircraft have the same seating.

The Boeing 777 seating I reviewed here is fully lie flat but is in a more traditional configuration. The A330 and A340 aircraft have sloping business class seats so are not the best first choice.

The good news is that Copenhagen, Oslo, Amsterdam and Stockholm are usually operated by Boeing 787 aircraft so you should get the newest business class product.

Apart from Oslo, which is further and uglier (!), all of these departure points are easy to reach from the UK and a pleasant place to stay for the night if a stopover is required.  I would have a serious look at these deals for your long-haul travel plans over the next six months.  Have a play around at qatarairways.com and see what you can find.

You should also do the maths and consider whether it is worth cancelling any Avios redemptions in order to rebook on a Qatar cash ticket.

The list of Copenhagen deals is here, the list of Stockholm deals is here, the Amsterdam deals are here and the Oslo deals are here.  Other destinations apart from those listed may well be available at sale prices if you search.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (83)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Chris says:

    I’ve been playing around with the fares on the Qatar website and it seems they allow Y/J or J/Y combinations. Admittedly not from AMS, but certainly works from CPH. J outbound and Y inbound to Dubai, for example, prices at about £670 and yields 225 TPs I believe. May be useful to some who might need these sorts of TPs rather than the full lot.

    Separately, does anyone know if I could connect airside from a LHR-CPH BA redemption to a CPH-DOH(-DXB) QR segment? The BA flight would arrive 70 mins before QR departure which is tight! Would I need to go airside and then back? No check in luggage…

  • James67 says:

    Based on my experience it is not all that difficult to find Finnair flights beating these current Qatar deals at any timr of year exScandinavia. Within next few years almost all Asian flights will be a350s with newest version of CX J seats. Main downsides are fewer TP and less destinations to choose from. Hopefully ee will see the return of sub £1k QR J seats in autumn or winter.

    • Sandgrounder says:

      Finnair are flying direct to Krabi from HEL from mid-November to the end of March. I don’t know if this is a regular winter route or something new. It appeals to me though if a decent sale pops up.

      • Sandgrounder says:

        A random fortnight in Feb throws up £1070 in J from Oslo, whixh is pretty good I suppose. It would be nice to go straight to the beaches, without a connection in Asia, especially if you have added an ex-EEA leg.

  • James says:

    I just compared AMS-BKK and LHR-BKK in March off peak, and the LHR-BKK was £1,025 and the AMS-BKK was 1465 euros (£1034).

    • Polly says:

      Which airline James?

    • Andy says:

      Can’t see anything below £1432 on Finnair from LHR?

    • James says:

      Im sorry, with all the numbers flying around I accidentally saw the price for the outbound travel from LHR as the full fare! (Qatar)

      Sorry guys, My mistake!

      • Polly says:

        And there we were just thinking Fat Finger guy was at it again! You gave us all false hope there for about 1minute!

  • Jeremy says:

    Any guesses as to whether Doha to Addis Ababa would be far enough for a full 140 TPs in Business?

    • Rob says:

      Link to the BA tier point calculator is in the bottom right margin of the desktop HFP!

      Or google it ….!

  • Roger says:

    Thanks, Polly, for your hints.

    Looking to justify cancelling our JNB 2-4-1 in F in favour of buying AMS-DOH-CPT in J, I came to some surprising conclusions. The obvious: booking to JNB when you want CPT is not cost effective. Curse BA’s (lack of) availabilty!

    Calculating the entire LON-CPT-LHR journeys on BA F to/from JNB valuing Avios at 1p, and adding JNB-CPT-JNB in Y was almost identical to the whole journey in QR J + RFS LON-AMS-LHR. Thinking of cancelling the BA 2-4-1, seeing the Avios and most of the ‘fees’ returned and considering the TPs and Avios earned on QR ensuring our Gold continued into 2017 was an interesting revelation.

    However, getting a £1,100+ refund in my semi-redundant BAPP card account would be a benefit too far. Also, although the scenarios were cost-neutral when valuing Avios at 1p, I’d still have to cough up about £2,729 now to buy the QR flights.

    Then I did a comparison search and found KL AMS-CPT in J nonstop in both directions for £2,668. Cheaper, quicker but KL. As a former KLM Royal Wing member of Flying Dutchman I have fond memories of KL but have not flown KL since it was subsumed into Flying Blue. But for 2 overnight flights, I think I could put up with losing the Avios and TPs.

    I haven’t yet booked in case a QR 2-4-1 offer turns up and if not, we still have the back-up of BA to JNB.

    BTW, among the various options were good offers from TK and, er, ET (Ethiopian Airlines). Long connections with the latter and very little discussion of the airline but lower prices. Hmm.

    • Polly says:

      Roger, I can see your dilemma. It was only when I realised the cost benefit etc, that for an extra £550 pp incl our positioning flts to CPH, plus we would obtain silver very quickly in autumn, that swayed us this time. My MP card expires end of sept, my OH AB card goes in jan. So either way we had to start getting status matches etc or jump on a QR J which we think equals a BA F, plus we were going to HKT anyway via KUL on the 241. Thus, a no brainer to re use our 241 next year. And we were still having to buy a flt to HKT on MH or air Asia. Yes, it would have been even cheaper from AMS but glad now we forked out the extra £200 pp for v short connections in DOH. Decisions decisions. If you are GOLD already then you have more choice who you fly with, which is great for you.

  • Redkitty says:

    Hi slightly of-topic, if I choose QR, would having OW Sapphire status mean anything in terms of the additional luggage of 15kg for non-USA destinations?

    I’ve only ever flown CX and BA using the additional Sapphire member benefit and both their airlines’ websites specifically state they recognize this benefit. However was unable to find any similar statement in the QR website.

  • James says:

    Just booked my trip in March to BKK.

    The only downside I found was all the return flights had a horrible 8 hour layover in DOH. the 2 hour were all unavailable at promotional pricing
    Im not exactly ecstatic about that… But its worth it for the saving/ miles/ the fact I was going anyway!

  • Roger says:

    just to clarify: that’s 2.02% OR 2.52%, not both!

    • Danny says:

      Yes that is a nice extra bonus. The cash back for a flight I bought in June 2015, for travelling in March 2016 was paid within 8 weeks, unlike BA, which only paid after the flights have been taken!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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