Bits: Qatar Airways £1350 Australia tickets, 250 Heathrow Rewards points with Heathrow Express

News in brief:

Qatar Airways £1,350 business class fares to Australia are back

Qatar Airways has brought back its £1,350 business class tickets to Australia.

An, unlike their recent sale, you do NOT need to travel with someone else.  These fares are good for one person travelling if necessary.

There fares are valid for departures from Oslo or Stockholm.  From the UK, you will find Stockholm easier to reach but obviously you need to work around availability.

You need to travel between, roughly, January and March.  Availability at these lowest fares tends to be restricted to one day per week much of the time, but luckily Qatar’s website makes it easy to see the cheapest dates.

You can fly to Perth, Adelaide or Melbourne.  Sydney and Canberra are not included.

Sample prices:

Oslo to Perth – 15,531 NOK (£1,386)

Oslo to Melbourne – 15,560 NOK (£1,388)

Stockholm to Perth – 15,520 SEK (£1,357)

Stockholm to Adelaide – 16,489 SEK (£1,441)

Even if the cheapest (red) Business Promo fares are not available, you can sometimes only pay another £100 or so for the more widely available Business Saver fare.

Whilst we are giving away a Qatar Airways business class flight at the Head for Points Christmas party next week, Australasia is excluded – so don’t be put off booking by thinking you might win one!

If you credit your flight to British Airways Executive Club, you would earn 600 tier points return.  This is enough for a British Airways Silver card, although you also need to have taken 4 one-way cash BA flights during your current membership year.

Click here for the Qatar Airways Stockholm offers page and here for the Qatar Airways Oslo offers page.  This earlier HFP article on Qatar Airways talks about the different plane types you can pick from, which may impact your departure airport.

You can book via the Qatar Airways site here.

Get 250 bonus Heathrow Rewards points with Heathrow Express

Heathrow Rewards has launched a special offer with Heathrow Express this month.  However, if you collect Avios, it isn’t very special at all.

You will receive 250 bonus Heathrow Rewards points with every booking.  This is, admittedly, a substantial improvement on the standard 1 Heathrow Rewards point per £1 spent.

The wording is vague unfortunately.  The email I got, and the wording on the Heathrow Express website here, says “Offer not applicable to bookings made with discounts” but if you look at the Terms & Conditions on the Heathrow Rewards website (see here, log-in required) the only restriction is “Offer not applicable when using HAL employee discount.”

However ….

If you book your tickets at heathrowexpress.com/avios you will earn an impressive 10 Avios per £1 spent.

If you are buying a £25 Express Saver Single peak time ticket, you would earn 250 Avios or, with this promotion, 275 Heathrow Rewards points.  Heathrow Rewards is marginally better, but not by much.

If you were spending £37 on an Express Saver Return for off-peak travel, you would be worse off with this deal – you’d earn 370 Avios or 287 Heathrow Rewards points.

There are good reasons to take Heathrow Rewards points in some scenarios.  If you want to convert to one of their other partners – Etihad, Virgin, Emirates, Lufthansa, Singapore or Royal Brunei – it is a good deal.  It would also be a good deal if Heathrow Rewards ran another 50% bonus promotion on conversions to Avios.

Since you get 250 extra points per booking, you may want to book 2 x one-way tickets in separate transactions instead of one return booking.  Check the prices first though.

Note that there is no service at all between 24th – 27th December.