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How to link Qatar Airways Privilege Club and British Airways Executive Club Avios accounts

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We are running three articles today covering the launch of the Qatar Airways Privilege Club and Avios partnership.

Our introductory piece on the benefits of linking our your British Airways Executive Club account to your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account is here.

We have produced this standalone article on how to link your British Airways and Qatar Airways accounts to give us an easy reference point for future articles.

How to link your Qatar Airways Privilege Club and BA Executive Club accounts

How to link your Qatar Airways Privilege Club and BA Executive Club accounts

Linking your Privilege Club and Executive Club accounts is the first step in transferring your Avios from one account to another, and being able to take advantage of the discounted redemptions and new partners that Qatar Airways offers.

The conversion rate is 1:1 and you can move your Avios back and forth, instantly, as many times as you want, for free.

The process is very easy and can be completed in three short steps:

Step 1: sign in to your Privilege Club account

If you don’t already have a Qatar Airways Privilege Club account you need to sign up for one first.

Sign up at this page.

Note that children under 18 cannot join Privilege Club. There is no point altering their date of birth because you cannot link your account to British Airways without a date of birth match.

Once you have an account, head to the Qatar Airways Avios page. Click the ‘link my accounts’ button:

Qatar Avios link account

You are then redirected to another page which lets you link your British Airways Executive Club account. You cannot link an Iberia Plus or Aer Lingus AerClub account.

Make sure your personal details match on both accounts so you can link them smoothly. I am told by Qatar Airways that there must be a match of first name, surname and date of birth.

If you have issues and have a middle name, try putting it in the same field as your first name rather than the ‘middle name’ field. This fixes the issue for some people.

Qatar link your avios accounts

Step 2: log in to your BA Executive Club account

Clicking the button will redirect you to a login page on britishairways.com. You may have to verify your login with two factor authentication.

link your Qatar Airways Privilege Club and BA Executive Club accounts

You are also given a special code that you are told to keep safe in case “you ever need to log in without your device” again. I believe this is a special code you can use if your two-factor authentication device is unavailable.

Step 3: Confirm and check your balance on Privilege Club

Once you’ve done that the process is completed and you return to the Qatar Airways site. You should see your full Avios balance. You can see both my Qatar Airways Avios balance as well as my British Airways Executive Account Avios balance:

Qatar link avios account balance

Linking your accounts does not automatically mean that Privilege Club has access to any Avios in Executive Club. You still need to use the ‘Combine Avios’ tool to shift Avios between the two. This is a free and instantaneous process.

You can move your Avios in either direction, at 1:1, as many times as you like.

Further reading:


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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 – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits 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

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus 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 (215)

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

  • Mark M says:

    Thanks – could be useful.
    BUT – I meant “Will BA permit you to drop 2nd & 3rd given names. if your passport includes them?”
    In my case, BA shows three first names and a surname, as on my passport.
    Qatar allowed ONLY one first name, and says middle names are optional.
    No hyphens or spaces in surname involved, but I still can’t see how to resolve it – unless I ‘lose’ my 2nd & 3rd names on BA. But could that create issues elsewhere later?

    • Felipe says:

      The big issue here is that for you to have a credit card that sends Avios to a BA Account, they must have same names too… This means that BA has to have your full name. This is bloody ridiculous… Why they just don’t use our national security number then?

  • Adil says:

    Getting a 404 page missing error when trying to use the link account option on the Qatar website, anyone else?

  • chris says:

    Anyone who hasn’t used this promotion I would do it quick as its now being abused on Hotukdeals people signing up multiple accounts
    Im sure they will pull the plug .

    • Aron says:

      Yep and it looks like the maximum number of times you can now link accounts is 2.

  • Gary says:

    Really struggling to link my accounts. I have 2 middle names which are in my BA account as part of my first name. But Qatar doesn’t allow 2 spaces in the first name section. Not sure how to resolve this.

    • John says:

      Wait for QR to change its policy

    • Rob says:

      You probably can’t. Join the queue of O’Hanrahan’s and Devere-Strawbridge’s in complaining 🙂

    • peteryu says:

      My wife has similar issue ( her first name has 2 spaces ) so cannot link properly. She wrote to Qatar attaching a copy of ID card. Hope they will fix it.

  • LC says:

    Signed my wife up just now and no avios points showing in account. Has the offer been pulled? (I signed up yesterday without issue).

  • Roger W says:

    You can also link accounts on the BA page, if the QR page doesn’t work for some reason.

  • gordon says:

    I already signed up for a Qatar account on the last promotion for 2,000 points a few months back,But my wife has just signed up and 2,500 avios instantly so it’s still ok and not been pulled yet….

    • gordon says:

      Accounts now linked and 4,500 avois from both our accounts transferred over to Executive account. Very easy.

  • Jim says:

    Latam earn and burn, great news given their withdrawal from oneworld

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

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