Qatar Airways updates its Travel with Confidence policy

Qatar Airways has extended its ‘Travel with Confidence’ policy and made some changes. In general it is now marginally less generous although still very flexible.

The new policy applies to new bookings made by 31st December 2020.

This article explains Qatar’s original ‘Travel with Confidence’ policy. The changes now mean that:

• Date changes are free for travel up to 31st December 2021 (previously 2020). This applies whether your flight is cancelled or still operating.
• Destination changes are free if your original booking is cancelled, for travel up to 31st December 2021. This was previously open to virtually all bookings, cancelled or operating.
• You can choose to swap your ticket value for Qmiles. You will now receive 80 Qmiles per $1 spent (previously 100 per $1).
• You can, on request, have the validity of your ticket extended up to two years from the date you originally booked
• The option to cash in your ticket for a Qatar Airways voucher, topped up by an extra 10% of the base fare and valid for two years, remains

What has changed, unsurprisingly, is the ‘5000 mile’ rule. This allowed you to change your flight – even if it wasn’t cancelled – to any city within 5000 miles of the original destination. You could swap a ticket to Bangkok to a ticket to Sydney with nothing extra to pay.

Destination changes – which are now only allowed if your flight is cancelled – must, for Qatar Airways Privilege Club members, now be within the same geographic area. ‘Area’ is defined as Africa, American, Australasia, Far East or GCC.

If you are not a Qatar Airways Privilege Club member, you can only change the destination within the same country or to another country within 500 miles.

(If isn’t clear if the former applies if you are a Qatar Airways Privilege Club member but you put a British Airways Executive Club number into your booking. Potentially, for extra safety, it may be better to put in a Privilege Club number when you book and swap it for your BA number later.)

You can read the full policy on the Qatar Airways website here.

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