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I’m looking to book tickets for 2 adults to Bangkok or Phuket in November to mid December, flexible across about 6 weeks. The Qatar site is a nightmare to use as it involves manually checking every single date, there are plenty of award seats available but 98% seem to be double Avios seats and I can’t find an easy way of finding the standard priced reward seats. This is also making it difficult to even establish what the taxes are so I can explore alternative airports (i.e. Dublin or Manchester, or maybe Amsterdam).
Any tips? Or any ideas what the taxes from London are for each leg?
Generally, available Phuket to London is a bit better. London to Bangkok is incredibly hard to find. I’m considering using my vouchers on the BA London to Doha flight. For the return I can do Phuket to Doha on Qatar fairly easily, but again it’s the other way with Doha to Phuket or Doha to Bangkok where I’m really struggling to find anything with Qatar. They are by far the best value reward seats hence pushing to find something with them.
Thanks!
Have you tried AA as they work brill for business tix on Iberia metal. I found QR hard to use too, many tickets with the 2x flex which are double avios.
On a side note looking for a QR flight Doha to Karachi for a friend and was shocked at taxes and fees for a 2 hour flight. £368 return. LHR-DOH territory.
QR do seem to charge double avios at peak times, I found that this was the case even when seats were first released for December. @Aston100 posted in another thread about spending a lot of time searching for award seats in school holidays and not finding any standard pricing. I’m still quite new to QR redemptions but am going to try and book for less popular periods going forward.
Have you tried AA as they work brill for business tix on Iberia metal. I found QR hard to use too, many tickets with the 2x flex which are double avios.
On a side note looking for a QR flight Doha to Karachi for a friend and was shocked at taxes and fees for a 2 hour flight. £368 return. LHR-DOH territory.
How would this work using my Avios points, with AA and Iberia?
QR do seem to charge double avios at peak times, I found that this was the case even when seats were first released for December. @Aston100 posted in another thread about spending a lot of time searching for award seats in school holidays and not finding any standard pricing. I’m still quite new to QR redemptions but am going to try and book for less popular periods going forward.
I can’t find any months that dont seem to be peak times though, and the dates I’m searching aren’t in school holidays!
any ideas what the taxes from London are for each leg?
Perhaps I misunderstood your comments in this thread, but I am not struggling to find availability outside English school holidays.
Here is an example (literally the first date I searched actually), and should help you with regards to taxes.
Posted some screenshots showing the charges for a date in May.
Seem to have gone into the moderation queue or something.“How would this work using my Avios points, with AA and Iberia?”
@sturgeon The point is you use the AA website to search for reward seats on Qatar flights. If there are any available to AA then you search the Qatar website for the same dates.“How would this work using my Avios points, with AA and Iberia?”
@sturgeon The point is you use the AA website to search for reward seats on Qatar flights. If there are any available to AA then you search the Qatar website for the same dates.OK makes sense, thanks. So will this only show the Qatar seats for the standard Avios rates and not the double Avios/2x flex seats? Or how does this differ to searching for seats via the Qatar site directly?
I agree that the QR website doesn’t make it easy to find availability without resorting to scrolling through the dates one at a time. There does seem to be some standard Avios availability from MAN and EDI to HKT and return on various dates in the first half of November – not sure how long you were planning to be away for , but for example you can go out on 1 November and return on 16 November, so it may be worth persevering with the painful search starting from there? It’s showing me 150k avois and c£518 per person return from MAN or EDI.
“How would this work using my Avios points, with AA and Iberia?”
@sturgeon The point is you use the AA website to search for reward seats on Qatar flights. If there are any available to AA then you search the Qatar website for the same dates.Thanks, wasn’t aware of this.
Quite a useful way of looking for QR availability across a calendar month.
It again confirms that Qatar are talking BS when they tell Rob that they don’t blackout business class during the main English school holiday dates.
Amusing to see that there is standard avios availability on QR from BHX on 4th Sept and throughout the rest of Sept.
Prior to that date is English school summer holidays and there is zero availability at standard avios pricing, as has been the case from the day Qatar announced flights were available to book out of BHX – I’ve checked almost every day for flights in July and August 2023.Rob, if you read this before your meeting with Qatar UK this week, ask them to check with their bosses in Doha about these blatant blackout dates on standard avios priced business class award seats during the main English school holidays.
This topic has all been a bit rambling and lacking. QR IT is probably the worst in the industry IMO but the app is better than the website and nit so bad once you get used to it.
@sturgeon, for one-stop flights UK-DOH-Thainstone you should expect to pay about £350pp, and for the return about £140pp.You did not say but I am guessing you are departing and returning from London? If so then try booking via BA web site because it is easier, abd also easier to arrange cancellations or changes if need be. From/to London on QR to/from BKK/HKT you will be charged 75000 avios per person each way. Note that availability on BA site is not the same as on QR site. Use the QR site only if you cannot find suitable dates available on BA site.
If you are flying from a regional airport as opposed to London then use the QR site nit the BA site. This is because from most regional airports to/from Thailand the BA site will charge you just over 93000 avios per person as opposed to 75000 avios per person if booking via QR site. I have not checked recently so it is possible this discrepancy may have been fixed since the last time I did.
Note that if you fly from UK-Thailand on QR you will have UK/EC261 protection. You would not have this pritection for your return flight from Thailand to the UK if you fly QR. For this reason I would recommend you explore returning in AY from Thailand or on BA from HKG as both AY and BA would provide protection on the return journey. This close to departure there is the possibility you may find availability on AY both to and from Thailand. Seriously consider it if you can, Sofaloubge is great, you do not have the plane swap lottery you do with QR, no middle of night connections in Doha, and if you are unlucky to be downgraded it will be to PY on AY but to Y on QR as they have no PY. AY also operate from MAN, EDI and DUB but note that winter schedules to these are not ideal for Thailand connections. To the riobs sone flights for AY are also operated by Nora and unline other OW partners BA does not let us book these on award flights. All AY fliggts to/from LHR are however operated by AY themselves.
If you do opt to return on AY and you cannot find availability from HKT but you can from BKK then a LCC from HKT-BKK should be around £50pp. Thailand to London on AY is about 93000 avios plus £38 pp IIRC.
If you opt to return from HKG on BA tven the 100,000 avios pp option should be under £100 IIRC. Phuket to HK on Air Asia or HK Express (CX LCC) is typically £100pp. CX business rewards booked via BA site are 25000 avios plus about £50pp. This might be cheaper if boojed via QR site. You could also return on BA from SIN but this would cost slightly more avios and a lot more cash than returning from HKG.
Other notes: while AA and other sites can be useful for searching availability, it may not be same on QR flights as the QR site. 150k seats are not peak dates, they are seats QR is willing to sell at double the price when standard availability is gone. Quite a few readers have reported having their schedules changed or being downgraded by QR when booking QR reward flights on BA site. I suspect the numbers are very small but I am just making you aware what readers have reported. There are also reports that dealing with QR CS is difficult when things go wrong.
If you opt to return from HKG
Something else to consider with that option – if you were intending to do another Asia trip the following year, then booking HKG-UK as a return (on separate PNR to your outbound) rather than one-way, such that the second leg becomes the outbound for your next trip (for which you then book a separate one-way flight back) may save you a fair bit on taxes/fees, due to Hong Kong’s rules on that. Last time I looked, it was something like £300 cheaper to book HKG-LHR-HKG than LHR-HKG-LHR. Not sure your final leg would necessarily even need to be back to HKG – I think you could do it as an open jaw to some other city in Asia, but so long as your booking starts in HKG you should get the lower cash component.
If you are flying from a regional airport as opposed to London then use the QR site nit the BA site. This is because from most regional airports to/from Thailand the BA site will charge you just over 93000 avios per person as opposed to 75000 avios per person if booking via QR site. I have not checked recently so it is possible this discrepancy may have been fixed since the last time I did.
Hi BJ.
Always comes to 75k for me when pricing up from LHR/MAN/BHX to BKK as one journey.
However, if I book the 2 sectors separately, it adds up to 93k.
I see my screenshots have now come out of moderation and are visible up thread.@sturgen, I didn’t say peak always equates to school holidays, but bear in mind that different regions of the world will have different term dates. QR seems to class the whole of December as peak with regard to award pricing, probably as there is so much travel demand during that month.
Thanks @Aston, hopefully that means EDI departures booked via BA are now 75k too. However, in light of reported downgrades and schedule changes I think I’ll continue booking QR via Qatar. Now if only BA could fix the IT to allow AY operated by Nordic Regional.
Thanks @Aston, hopefully that means EDI departures booked via BA are now 75k too. However, in light of reported downgrades and schedule changes I think I’ll continue booking QR via Qatar. Now if only BA could fix the IT to allow AY operated by Nordic Regional.
@BJ unless you would like to book Qatar first from HKG. Just booked LHR-DOH-HKG with second leg in first, QR charge 112500 avios but BA charge 75000 + same tax/fees.any ideas what the taxes from London are for each leg?
Perhaps I misunderstood your comments in this thread, but I am not struggling to find availability outside English school holidays.
Here is an example (literally the first date I searched actually), and should help you with regards to taxes.Sorry, off topic but how did you embed a photo to a message?
@BWS click on the IMG button to the right of the DEL above the text box and it opens up a URL link
I’ve never done it myself though
Agree @Jon, exactly what we are now doing with our amex companion vouchers. I originally intended something even mire creative and rewarding but with BA suspending BKK, and increasing difficulty generating required avios, this Asian scheme works well for us.
Thanks @DonLee, that previously worked on QR site bookings too but it sounds like they fixed it but BA have not.i hope your flight’s coming up soon; sadly QR are reportedly going to ground the a380s again so you may want to keep an eye on metal and seat allocation.
Just booked last week Flight MAN – DOH – BKK and back Phuket – DOH – MAN (24th Dec to 13th Jan) availability was fairly easy to find on the website and also had the option to see in a whole month calendar view. Something I liked is that I can book Multi Trips on one booking, for BA i usually have to call.
Have you tried AA as they work brill for business tix on Iberia metal. I found QR hard to use too, many tickets with the 2x flex which are double avios.
On a side note looking for a QR flight Doha to Karachi for a friend and was shocked at taxes and fees for a 2 hour flight. £368 return. LHR-DOH territory.
This is a game-changer for me! Was pulling my hair out over the last week or so looking for flights to Thailand but this method of using AA to check has helped me greatly so thanks very much
@Duggie1982, note when searching via AA that BA will not book you any AY regional connections operated by NORRA. For these, it might be worth submitting a partner reward enquiry to Qatar PC as other OW partners such as AA and Alaska can book NORRA. Note also that Qatar PC availability on QR can differ from AA too so always worth cross referencing QR availability with QR PC and BAEC too to cover all options.
The Qatar site is a nightmare to use as it involves manually checking every single date, there are plenty of award seats available but 98% seem to be double Avios seats and I can’t find an easy way of finding the standard priced reward seats.
I’ve had similar problems. I was looking at flights from Doha to Sydney. The calculator claims this is a 90k Avios trip each way.
However, when I went to redeem, I tried every date between tomorrow (9 July 2023) and 9 July 2024 and every date came up as 133,000 Avios each way. There is only one flight to choose from. Nothing on it says double points and there is no option for a non-double point flight.
It seems like the promise of a 90k flight to Sydney is a bit, “misleading”.
Have you tried AA as they work brill for business tix on Iberia metal. I found QR hard to use too, many tickets with the 2x flex which are double avios.[/quote
This was amazingly useful. I did some searches and, annoying only about 10% of the dates have availability on the AA website. However, the ones that did only need 80k – 10k less than Qatar claimed and 53,000 less than they actually charged for the same flight. Thats pretty crazy.
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