Oman Air joins oneworld today – Avios flights may already be bookable

We have been waiting a long time for this, but Oman Air joins the oneworld airline alliance today.

This means that you can redeem (and earn) Avios on Oman Air flights. With British Airways no longer flying to Muscat, and Oman Air offering a high quality product, this is worth a look.

If you are interested in booking Oman Air to Muscat with Avios, I strongly recommend you do it now. Availability may never be as good as this. With few partners before it joined the alliance, there wasn’t a lot of demand for redemption seats.

(EDIT: the official press release, which arrived at 6am, suggests that benefits are fully available from tomorrow even though it joins today. This may mean that Avios seats don’t appear on ba.com until tomorrow. The comments below suggest that seats ARE bookable now via Qatar Airways Privilege Club.)

Last time I looked at Oman Air’s availability for its own frequent flyers it was rare to see more than two seats available in business class. You may be out of luck if you are booking for a family.

It isn’t clear how many Avios will be needed. This very old Avios partner chart (click to enlarge):

…. is still usually accurate for long haul flights even though many partners now deviate from it for short haul. This would imply, given a travel distance of 3,629 miles from Heathrow:

• 41,500 Avios return in Economy
• 122,000 Avios return in Business

You CANNOT use a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 Companion Voucher or a Barclays Avios upgrade voucher on Oman Air.

Taxes and charges between Heathrow and Muscat if you book on Oman Air’s own website using its own miles are:

• £225 return in Economy
• £391 return in Business

There is no guarantee that British Airways will charge the same amount but it is as good a guide as we can give.

Get a quote via Finnair and Qatar Airways

Finnair and Qatar Airways both use Avios as their frequent flyer currency.

Whilst flights on Finnair, BA and Qatar usually cost the same wherever you book them, there is a lot of divergence when it comes to the Avios and charges cost for partner flights.

We will run the numbers ourselves in the next couple of days, but if you plan to book today it is worth seeing what you would pay if you move your Avios to a Finnair Plus or Qatar Airways Privilege Club account.

Our Oman reviews

There are two flights per day from Heathrow Terminal 4 to Muscat, with a day flight leaving around 8am and an overnight flight leaving around 8pm. Total flying time is just over seven hours.

We were meant to be flying to Muscat tomorrow to celebrate the launch, but obviously the situation in the Middle East made that difficult. It will hopefully be re-arranged, but until then you can take a look at our 2019 review of Oman Air business class on the Boeing 787 fleet.

(Note that, since that review was written, First Class has been decommisioned and turned into a ‘business plus’ product. You can book this for cash but it is very unlikely it will be redeemable for Avios for IT reasons.)

We ran two hotel reviews in 2023 after my last visit – the beach resort of Jumeirah Muscat Bay and the mountain resort of Alila Jabal Akhdar. An older review of The Al Bustan Palace, A Ritz Carlton Hotel, is here.

New openings this year have included a Hotel Indigo in the mountains near Alila and a St Regis resort in Muscat.

We can hopefully do some more Oman and Oman Air content if the launch event is rearranged.