Qatar Airways has just revealed a major development for its Privilege Club loyalty program. While I can’t yet say for certain whether it’s good or bad news, I’m intrigued and cautiously optimistic.
Qatar Airways replaces Qmiles with Avios
Currently Qatar Airways Privilege Club members earn Qmiles with the program, which is the points currency that you can redeem for flights, upgrades, and other experiences. As of late March 2022, Qatar Airways will instead adopt Avios as its points currency, replacing Qmiles.
For those not familiar, Avios is the points currency of International Airlines Group (IAG) carriers, including British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Vueling. When the transition happens, Qmiles will convert into Qatar Airways Avios at a 1:1 ratio.
While each airline loyalty program maintains its own “flavor” of Avios, there are hundreds of Avios partners for earning and redeeming rewards, including in travel, leisure, shopping, and financial services. Presumably we can expect that Qatar Airways will also have its own flavor of Avios, but that Avios can be transfered between accounts at a 1:1 ratio if some basic requirements are met.
Note that nothing is changing to how Qatar Airways Privilege Club status is earned, at least for now. Status will still be earned based on how many Qpoints you earn. Furthermore, it’s expected that redemption rates on Qatar Airways will remain unchanged, and continue to follow current pricing. So it sounds like Qatar Airways won’t adopt a pure distance based award chart, like British Airways Executive Club has, for example.
What’s the logic for Qatar Airways adopting Avios?
What’s the logic of Qatar Airways adopting Avios as its points currency? A few general thoughts:
- Qatar Airways is the single largest shareholder of IAG, so while Qatar Airways isn’t an IAG airline, the Doha-based carrier does have a real connection to these airlines
- Avios is a much larger…