Revisiting booking Qatar redemptions with horrible IT

[masaccio]

Using AA to find Qatar redemptions that are not 2x Avios as per this thread doesn’t look obvious to me.

On aa.com, I see flight availability like this:

Quite why AA suggest this would be 60k Avios I have no idea. But then going to the Qatar search, I pick the same date I see the Q2 fare:

The 90k fares on other dates are economy.

I suppose ‘main cabin’ on the AA search means my request for Business failed so they’re showing an economy fare? But even so, that day on Qatar in economy is 90k per person one way plus 1100 quid!

What am I doing wrong?

[masaccio]

*sigh* the form has mangled the photos and I can’t edit. @Rob I wish there was a preview of posts like GitHub.com. Would be very helpful for markup-heavy posts.

I do an AA search for Business/First BHX-DOH on Feb 8 and it returns a ‘main cabin’ flight at 60K. I think thats cock-up number 1 as wouldn’t that be econ9my if main cabin?

Searching the same day on Qatar I see only the inflated fares for both business and economy.

Could somebody expand on the guidance from the original thread just how AA searches are meant to help with Qatar’s horrible reward search?

[memesweeper]

Try Cathay Pacific? Seems to return results for Business/First that are actually bookable on Qatar site.

[zapato1060]

Whats quoted on aa.com is AA miles not Avios IIRC.

Seats.Aero is great for QR availability but only up to 2 months with free package.

edit: are you searching the aa info on BA site and purchasing there? I just saw on aa 14 feb DPS-DOH. Same flight bookable on BA 60k £70 fees.

[masaccio]

memesweeper wrote:

Try Cathay Pacific? Seems to return results for Business/First that are actually bookable on Qatar site.

It does, though searches take 20 seconds each and only display one day. You need to scan through the list to see if DOH is a stopover airport and then if nothing is found, flip back to the start.

I suppose all this terrible IT does mean seats are only taken by the most determined travellers!

A recent FlyerTalk thread suggests availability on x1 redemptions appears very close to travel dates.