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Qatar Airways resumes direct Auckland flights – book for 180,000 Avios return in Business

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Qatar Airways has announced the resumption of direct flights between Doha and Auckland.

This opens up an exceptional opportunity to fly in Business Class from the UK to New Zealand on Avios, with flights costing just 180,000 Avios return plus around £600 of taxes and charges per person.

If, that is, you can get around the Qatar Airways booking system ….

Auckland Qatar Airways

Post covid, Qatar Airways has been flying to Auckland via Adelaide in Australia. The tag to Auckland is now being dropped and replaced by a direct flight.

Services start on 1st September and will operate daily.

An Airbus A350-1000 is being scheduled, allowing passengers to benefit from the acclaimed Qsuite seat. We reviewed Qatar Airways Qsuite on the Airbus A350 here.

How to book this flight with Avios

The biggest ‘sweet spot’ in the entire Avios system is probably now Business Class from the UK to Australia / New Zealand for 180,000 Avios + taxes and charges per person.

This price only applies to Qatar Airways flights. The British Airways service to Sydney is 250,000 to 300,000 Avios per person, return, in Business Class, on the rare chance you can get seats.

What is even better is that Qatar Airways guarantees to make two Business Class seats available on each flight.

Once those two seats have gone, additional seats are often available for ‘double Avios’. If you needed ‘double Avios’ for all four legs (UK to Doha, Doha to Auckland, Auckland to Doha, Doha to UK) then a return Business Class flight would cost 360,000 Avios. In reality you may pay less as you can mix and match ‘double Avios’ and ‘single Avios’ legs if available.

Qatar Airways A350 to Auckland

No-one has yet figured out when Qatar Airways releases the two ‘standard price’ Business Class seats

Qatar Airways does NOT operate like British Airways. You do not get the two ‘guaranteed’ standard rate Business Class seats appearing immediately when the schedules open.

On Day 1, you usually see only ‘double Avios’ seats available in Business Class. These are marked with a green ‘Q2’ in the booking system.

Roughly 10-14 days later, the two guaranteed seats at standard pricing seem to appear – most of the time.

Some standard rate dates are bookable today

Booking for this new Auckland service only opened today so I wasn’t expecting standard rate Avios seats in Business Class to be available.

However, I did find a few dates. Here is availability from Birmingham to Auckland for October:

and inbound:

The total cost is 180,000 Avios plus £541 in taxes and charges in Business Class.

The cost is meant to be identical if you book Qatar Airways flights on ba.com. However, due to tech weirdness, non-London UK departures often need more Avios if booked on the BA site.

You’ve got another snag – limited UK availability to Doha

Let’s assume that, in 10 days or so, Qatar Airways switches all of the remaining Business Class Avios availability from Doha to Auckland to standard pricing, not double pricing.

You might still be unable to get a seat at 180,000 Avios return because of the inability to get a seat from London Heathrow to Doha for the first leg and final leg.

London Gatwick availability is also tight because Qatar Airways has just scrapped its second daily Gatwick service. The airline has consolidated passengers from the cancelled flight onto the remaining one.

Your best bet for standard rate Avios availability from the UK to Doha this Autumn – assuming you are looking for seats from 1st September when the Auckland flights start – is from Birmingham.

Qatar Airways has only just resumed flights from Birmingham and, until cash and reward demand builds up, seat availability should be OK.

You can see in my example above that I chose Birmingham as my departure point. This wasn’t through choice – it was simply impossible to get a flight from London on the right day. Of course, if you’re happy to spend a few days in Doha in transit then it is not an issue.

Conclusion

Auckland is returning from 1st September as a direct flight from Doha on Qatar Airways.

This means that one-stop 180,000 Avios return redemptions in Business Class from the UK to Auckland are now back too.

This is exceptional value given that you will struggle to find cash fares to Australasia in Business Class for under £4,500 this year.


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 (114)

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

  • Aston100 says:

    Have Qatar Airways genuinely not told anyone what their reward seat policies are?
    Since the moment BHX > DOH was re-instated, I’ve been checking at least twice a day for business class availability during summer school holidays, and there has been none at standard pricing. I have seen standard availability later in the year outside peak/holidays though.
    So they are clearly implementing some kind of blackout on certain dates.

    • Rob says:

      I was in Doha with the team in February as you know, I discussed this with them, they said no blackouts.

  • JRich says:

    For whatever reason when I price up the BHX to AKL flights on BA.com I get 113,000 + £385. I thought the harmonized the pricing between Qatar and BA? I guess I could just transfer the avios to Qatar first and then book, but….

    • Rob says:

      Should be, yes. Your comment does ring a bell though – there may be an error for UK regional pricing.

    • Axel says:

      The tax amount may fluctuate as you go through the redemption steps.

      A Qatar Gold gets 5% discount and can book for anyone

  • James says:

    Anyone ever found a way to transfer BA household Avios points to Qatar?

    • Matt says:

      I was able to book a 90k J flight on Qatar using miles in my household account for someone else.

      • Rob says:

        Yes, you can do that.

        What you can’t do is book a 90k flight on qatarairways.com if your BA HHA contains 50k in your name and 40k in your partners.

        • James says:

          That’s a failing from Qatar in my opinion. Any ways around it?

          • Rob says:

            No

          • James says:

            Flight I’m looking at is available on Qatar website but for double Avios, this of course doesn’t show on BA Avios booking platform but would they be able to book it on the phone?

          • Rob says:

            No – in the same way that BA can’t book the extra seats Iberia offers at iberia.com

          • James says:

            So restrictive! What a shame.

          • Rob says:

            Can’t you begin to imagine how messy the IT would be? How would Qatar know that the ticket was in the name of someone on your BA Friends & Family list for eg?

          • James says:

            They keep aeroplanes in the sky, I’m sure this wouldn’t be too difficult for them.

  • Robert says:

    Is it possible to use the new version of Amex 2-4-1 companion voucher on Qatar flights?

  • The Original David says:

    This article seems very confused on the difference between direct and non-stop flights. Flying DOH-ADL-AKL all on one aircraft is a direct flight. Flying DOH-AKL without stopping in ADL is a non-stop flight. QR has been operating direct flights to AKL for ages.

    • Rhys says:

      Technically true, but I think most people don’t consider it that way.

    • John says:

      Do you need to get off the plane in ADL and go through security? If yes then it makes almost no difference whether the flight is “direct” or it’s actually two different planes, as the crew change and you can’t leave anything on board.

      Only advantage is that if the first segment is delayed then you don’t have to worry about missing the next segment – though in a severe delay it’s possible that they might send the DOH-ADL plane back to DOH and sort out the AKL pax separately

      • robert says:

        just done this route both ways & you get off the plane for approx 1.5 hours , new crew but same plane then onward to DOH or AKL . thru bag detector but not passport control so in transit I guess

  • Tom1 says:

    When does seatspy start working for standard price Qatar redemptions ?

    Until then… is there an easy way to see month/week views where it only shows business class awards at standard price ?

    • NorthernLass says:

      SeatSpy doesn’t show QR?

      • Tom1 says:

        That’s my point – when will it?!

        And until then, what’s easiest way to find availability other than searching day by day.

  • No longer Entitled says:

    2. Really? I can think of half a dozen places off the top of my head within the Nordic region alone.

  • James Wyatt says:

    I booked LHR-PER recently in business to Doha and First to Perth using their “double miles”. I was disappointed to have to use so many Avios (and for two of us). But then a few days later the exact same tickets came up without having to spend double points so I booked that and cancelled the first booking. All Avios and money returned within a few days.

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

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