T-355 days: QR J award seats not showing on ba.com

[MilesOnPoint]

Has anyone else found that no Qatar J availability is appearing at midnight T-355 on BA.com?

I’m looking bang on midnight, at this stage just monitoring for Christmas 2023, so it’s not an issue with people on the phone holding them.

Availablity was showing up fine for 2 J seats, every day at 00:00 for LHR-DOH-MEL and LHR-SIN-SYD for flights up until around 7th December 2023.

Have QR defacto blocked seats by making them all double Avios and thus unbookable on BA.com?

Issue for us is that was have to book via BA.com as we need to add a lap infant (Qatar block lap infants from Business class award bookings through QR Privilege Club)

Any advice/thoughts appreciated

[MilesOnPoint]

*the latter routing should say LHR-DOH-SYD

[Aston100]

I’ve been unable to find any reward availability at ‘normal’ cost during English school holidays – been checking regularly for several months.
As soon as seats are released in English school holidays, they seem to default to the Q2 double avios cost and don’t ever come down to normal reward prices.

I am unable to find any articles or reliable commentary on this subject anywhere.
Would be good if HfP were to look into this as part of an updated article about using Avios to book QR reward tickets.

[Hbommie]

Do Qatar release T355? Or guarantee to release a certain amount of seats, I thought this was only a BA metal thing.

[Aston100]

Hbommie wrote:

Do Qatar release T355? Or guarantee to release a certain amount of seats, I thought this was only a BA metal thing.

Well, I can certainly see reward seats on various school holiday dates, but they are always at the double avios pricing (Q2).

[meta]

Qatar does not always release awards at T-355 instead they drip feed them into the system. It is also route dependent. And they can be gone or removed from the system just as fast. Sometimes they can be gone within couple of hours. You need to check every day if you really want them and book them straight away.

[marks7389]

Also, Qatar starts to release seats via their own site at T-361 so you may find the seats you want have already been taken if released prior to them being bookable on BA.com at T-355.

[Rob]

marks7389 wrote:

Also, Qatar starts to release seats via their own site at T-361 so you may find the seats you want have already been taken if released prior to them being bookable on BA.com at T-355.

This. If you’re not using a 241, move your Avios to Qatar Privilege and book from there if you see them.

Qatar has never officially stated that they open their guaranteed allocation on Day 1 although I was given the impression that this was the plan.

You don’t say which leg wasn’t available, but remember that you’re not just fighting BAEC members for the seats, you’re fighting QPC members globally. That DOH-SYD seat connects just as easily to any other country in Europe or Asia.

If DOH-SYD is there then obviously you can just swap your starting point to another UK or EU airport.

[MilesOnPoint]

Thanks Rob, I’ve checked for individual legs at midnight on multiple occasions and they are also absent.

Unfortunately I cannot book via Qatar Privilege as they do not permit lap infants on Avios bookings in business class made on qatarairways.com (BA.com allows 2 adults and 1 infant on an award booking with no problem at all on QR, when availability is present).

Hoping the the lack of availability is a temporary blip over the Christmas period and they will open up standard (1x) Avios seats up in January.

Aware that QR open their award seats earlier but looking at their website, it looks like they are being released as “2x Avios” seats from the get go.

[memesweeper]

MilesOnPoint wrote:

Aware that QR open their award seats earlier but looking at their website, it looks like they are being released as “2x Avios” seats from the get go.

^^^ this ^^^ I strongly suspect the “guaranteed” release is a handful of seats at 2x Avios. There’s no guarantee of normally priced Avios seats, which not only means you pay more, you cannot book via a partner like BA or Cathay.

[MilesOnPoint]

memesweeper wrote:

MilesOnPoint wrote:

Aware that QR open their award seats earlier but looking at their website, it looks like they are being released as “2x Avios” seats from the get go.

^^^ this ^^^ I strongly suspect the “guaranteed” release is a handful of seats at 2x Avios. There’s no guarantee of normally priced Avios seats, which not only means you pay more, you cannot book via a partner like BA or Cathay.

Yeah, unfortunately I think you are right. Such a pity as we ideally wanted to fly into Melbourne (rather than Sydney), enjoy the long leg in 777 QSuite double bed (perfect for bubbs) as well as the A380 bar on LHR-DOH leg. Ah well.

We’ll have to try the midnight phone bingo with BA for LHR-SIN-SYD in Club World instead. Bit gutted with the recent devaluation as it’s bumped up Sydney Avios pricing quite a bit (unlike the ££ savings available to North America).