Be aware: Not all partner flights will earn Avios with Qatar Airways Privilege Club

Right now, you may be looking at that headline and thinking “so what?” and if you’re not someone who uses the Qatar Airways Privilege Club, you have a point. For you, this won’t matter one little bit.

For people who do use the Privilege Club, however, this is important, but possibly not for the reason that you may think.

The issue

You may think that knowing which partner bookings will and will not earn Avios in Privilege Club is important because members will want to be sure that they’re not leaving any Avios earnings on the table by booking the wrong fare.

To an extent, that’s true. But because the types of fares which don’t earn Avios in Privilege Club are generally cheap, the earnings that you would miss out on by booking one of these fares are unlikely to be significant – booking a slightly more expensive fare (to ensure that you earn Avios) would still probably only earn you a paltry number of Avios.

There’s a more urgent reason why people should be aware that a few partner bookings will not earn Avios in Privilege Club and that reason centers around a change to the Privilege Club terms and conditions that kicked in this month.

Last week, we wrote about how the Qatar Airways Privilege Club has made it harder for members to redeem Avios for partners, loved ones, and friends and family and one of the ways in which it has made it harder is by bringing in rules governing who can and who cannot book reward flights for others.

The details are in the article linked above, but for the purpose of this article you only need to know this:

One of the key new rules, effectively, says that only someone who has credited a flight to the Qatar Airways Privilege Club or earned Avios in Privilege Club through the use of a Qatar Airways co-branded credit card can redeem Avios for someone else.

There are further rules that make Avios redemptions for others even more restrictive, but this is the key one that I wanted to highlight here.

This rule isn’t going to affect anyone who uses Privilege Club as their primary or secondary frequent flyer program, but if you’re someone who books rewards flights through Privilege Club courtesy of Avios that you transfer in to Privilege Club (from other airlines or from credit card partners like Citi), this is going to be an issue for you.

Yes, you can still book reward flights for yourself, but if you don’t meet the new Privilege Club redemption criteria, you can’t use your Avios balance to pay for anyone to join you on your trips. Not a spouse, not a relative, no one.

If this is the position you’re in (and you want to fix it), you only have two options:

1. Get a Qatar Airways co-branded credit card and start spending on it.
2. Credit a flight to the Qatar Airway Privilege Club

Option 1 will be a non-starter for most people because (a) they probably don’t have access to Qatar Airways co-branded credit cards (they’re not widely available) and (b) applying for a credit card that you only need for a single transaction* would probably be taking things a little far.

Option 2 will be the best way forward for most people and this is where a little jeopardy comes in to the equation.

*You only need to have had a qualifying transaction in your account at some point in the time you have been a Privilege Club member. You don’t have to credit a flight to your account every year and you don’t have to have credit card activity every year.

Be careful with partner flights

The good news (if you look hard enough) is that you don’t need to credit a Qatar Airways flight/booking to the Privilege Club in order to open up your ability to use your Avios balance on others.

Partner bookings will work just as well and it’s partner bookings that most people will be using to get around the new Privilege Club redemption requirements.

So far, that’s fine. Qatar Airways has a lot of airline partners all around the world, so most people interested in the Privilege Club will probably have a partner airline that they already use.

Logically, therefore, most people’s solution to this issue should be to credit the next super-cheap flight^♰ they take on their preferred Qatar Airways partner to their Privilege Club account.

Flight credited = Privilege Club conditions met = you’re free to book redemptions for others. Problem over. Right?

No. Not necessarily.

In order for the partner flight to count, there has be activity in your Privilege Club account as a result of that partner flight, and if you accidentally book a partner fare that doesn’t earn Avios in Privilege Club, you will have wasted your time and money as there will be no activity.

♰If you don’t already credit your flights to Privilege Club then when you do, you’ll be missing out on earnings in your preferred program so it makes sense to only credit a super-cheap (low earning) fare to privilege Club.

The partner fares to look out for

Note: With the exception of JetBlue and Virgin Australia, I’ve restricted the information below to OneWorld airlines and soon-to-be OneWorld airlines as these are the airlines likely to be most relevant to TFM readers.

You can find all the Qatar Airways earning charts here and you can find the Qatar Airways earnings calculator here.

USA

Most TFM readers are based in the United States and I suspect that most of this population who use the Privilege Club do so through the Avios they create when they convert Citi ThankYou Points into Qatar Airways Avios.

If that’s you and you haven’t ever credited a flight to Privilege Club (and don’t have a co-branded credit card), the issue we’ve been discussing affects you, and the two more obvious airlines for you to use to get around the issue are JetBlue, Alaska Airlines, and American Airlines.

If you’re going to be using a JetBlue flight to get around this issue you can relax. All JetBlue bookings (including Basic Economy) will earn at least some Avios when credited to Privilege Club°.

The same goes for all Alaska Airlines normal fares (including Basic Economy), just be careful that you don’t end up with one of Alaska’s odd fare codes (U, E, Z, & T) as they will not earn Avios in Privilege Club.

When it comes to American Airlines flights, there’s one fare code you need to avoid.

Here’s the Qatar Airways earnings chart for American Airlines, and as you should be able to see, “B” fare bookings (Basic Economy) bookings, will not earn Avios in Privilege Club.

This may not come as a big surprise because Basic Economy fares don’t earn miles or loyalty points in the American Airlines AAdvantage Program, but as they earn Avios in the British Airways Club, it’s worth noting that they do not earn Avios in Privilege Club.

°If you check the Qatar Airways earnings chart for JetBlue you may notice that the “N” fare code is missing. This, however, appears to be an omission because if you check how many Avios your JetBlue flight will earn via the Qatar Airways Calculator, you’ll see that the “N” fare appears. 

Europe

British Airways:

• All fares earn Avios.

Iberia

• All fares earn Avios

Finnair:

• All fares earn Avios.

Asia

Cathay Pacific:

• Fare codes S, N, & Q will not earn Avios.

Japan Airlines (JAL)

• All fares earn Avios.

Malaysia Airlines:

• Fare codes U, E, G, X, T, N, Q, O, P & I do not earn Avios, but these appear to be no longer used and/or award codes.

Philippine Airlines:

• All fares earn Avios.

Sri Lankan Airlines:

• Fare code G will not earn Avios

Africa/Middle East

Oman Air:

• All fares earn Avios.

Royal Air Maroc:

• All fares earn Avios.

Royal Jordanian:

• All fares earn Avios.

Pacific/Oceania

Fiji Airways:

• All fares earn Avios.

Qantas:

• All fares earn Avios.

Virgin Australia:

• Traveling between Australia and Doha – X, Z, A, W, K, L, E, F & M do not earn Avios.
• Traveling on all other Virgin Australia Flights – X & Z do not earn Avios.

Bottom line

Knowing which Qatar Airways partner flight bookings will and will not generate Avios when credited to a Privilege Club account has just become a lot more important (for some) and it’s key to note that there are a number of bookings that you can make (on major OneWorld airlines) which when credited to Privilege Club will not register at all. Avoid booking these and you should have no issues.

Related: How to set up a Qatar Airways “My List” (step-by-step guide)