News was out this morning via God Save the Points that Qatar Airways will be switching their program from QMiles (a Citi ThankYou transfer partner) over to Avios.
Currently, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia and Vueling all use Avios and you can switch your points freely between programs to use the program that works best for your points needs.
The change will happen in March but most of the details are unknown.
Namely:
- Will the award charts change? (Hopefully not)
- Will they introduce surcharges (I doubt it)
- Will you be able to transfer points in and out from other Avios programs at Avios.com? (we have no idea)
With all the unknowns there isn’t too much to analyze right now, but it’s certainly worth taking note and keeping an eye out for the transition.
Currently you would only want to use QMiles for travel on Qatar (in which case they are just as good as using American Airlines’ AAdvantage miles) but not for partners where the award chart isn’t great.
Thoughts?
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It would be great if you can actually USE the miles without the crazy high fees like on BA! It costs more to use rewards than to buy a cash ticket it seems like. Will be looking forward to seeing the results of the change.
It’s now been confirmed by Qatar Airways Privilege Club that Avios “will be fully transferable between Privilege Club and British Airways Executive Club”, this allows travellers on both airlines to pool their Avios into a single account.
In addition, BA and Qatar Airways will increase the number of Avios-based reward seats across their flights, to accomodate an expected jump in demand once both airlines are sharing a common currency’.