Auckland – London (Business): First timer help appreciated!

[steeevooo]

First timer here, so all help appreciated. This morning my wife and I managed to book to Sydney for next March using our AMEX companion voucher, which we are naturally very excited about. We will be travelling around a little and ultimately ending up in Auckland. We would like to fly business with Qatar Airways for our return leg in late March (noting that BA doesn’t fly from Auckland) and have just over 200,000 Avios to use. I’d appreciate any guidance that people could offer in terms of accessing the appropriate Reward flights – it appears from the Qatar Airways website that there is minimal availability for their current dates and what there is seems to be priced at double Avios. Is it a case that we need to be on the website as soon as the tickets get released (if so, what time do they get released?)?

First time that we have used our Avios, so apologies if this is a rather basic question!

Thanks in advance.

[jamesellis]

Qatar release reward tickets 360 days in advance at midnight UTC. One thing about Qatar to note is that they have sneaky blackout dates for business reward redemptions, which vary depending on the route. During these periods, they either don’t release any business seats (at least not 360 days in advance), or they release them at the “flexi” double avios pricing. I’m not aware of any blackout periods for Auckland in March, so you are probably alright in this regard.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you need reward space on both AUK-DOH and DOH-LHR/LGW. In your case, the London leg would have to be the calendar day after the Doha leg since that flight arrives around 2200. So in theory, someone booking just AUK-DOH could take those seats before AUK-LHR becomes available to you.

[NorthernLass]

Rob did an article on booking this route:

https://www.headforpoints.com/2023/05/10/qatar-airways-resumes-direct-auckland-flights-avios/

Bit of a shame that you’re not using the other half of your companion voucher, though if you end up not getting the QR seats, you could look at using it to come back from somewhere else BA flies from, like Singapore.

[DTR]

Yes per Northern Lass’ point above, shame to not make use of the voucher. We did a similar trip pre-Covid though in reverse (back from Sydney in F) and flew outbound via Hong Kong. You may be able to get a return from
Hong Kong in J on BA, then you just need to get from
AKL to HK. We did this on Air New Zealand, booked via Virgin Atlantic on Virgin Points. It was incredibly cheap – around 30k points each at the time plus £50, though that was the one leg we were in economy.

[phantomchickenz]

An option to consider, and one I have chosen for my last two NZ trips after reward seats outbound, is a cash fare back on Singapore Airlines. For some reason they are disproportionately lower return than outbound – you can currently fly AKL-LHR for £2.1k per person early March 2026.

If the only Qatar option in flexi, then you’re better off on SQ if you value Avios at 1p (£4.2k vs {£1k fees + £3.6k Avios}).