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Last week I wrote about Qatar Airways officially announcing a new route between Doha and Auckland which, at a little over 9,000 miles, will be the longest commercial flight in the world. Qatar Airways has scheduled the route to start from 3 December 2016 and it looks like Business Class award availability on this flight is already looking good.
The inaugural flight on 3 December only has Economy Class availability right now….
…but there’s Business Class award availability the very next day:
And there are a number of days in December and February where 4 Business Class seats are available for award bookings:
Availability in the other direction (Auckland to Doha) is pretty good do and, in this case, there are actually 4 Business Class awards available on the very first Qatar Airways non-stop flight between Auckland and Doha:
The month of January seems a bit sparse for award availability (at least compared to early December and what has so far been made available in February) but this may be down to any number of things.
Possibilities include:
- Awards for January haven’t been released in any great numbers because Qatar Airways expects good bookings to kick 2017 off.
- December has good availability because it’s a slow month for Business travel
- January availability my be worse than February availability because, while both Avios and AAdvantage Miles users can currently book January awards, it’s only those using Avios who can access awards deep into February – those using AAdvantage miles can only book to the beginning of February right now.
How Much Are Awards?
Qatar Airways is part of OneWorld and, as such, the two most widely held currencies that can book awards on Qatar Airways are AAdvantage Miles and Avios.
Whichever of those currencies you’d like to use, your first stop will need to be the British Airways website as AA.com is incapable of showing Qatar Airways award availability (all the screenshots above are from BA.com).
Booking Using AAdvantage Miles
Once you’ve found the flight(s) you’re interested in you’ll have to call up your local American Airlines office as Qatar Airways awards are not bookable on AA.com.
Business Class awards between the Middle East and the South Pacific (Doha – Auckland) cost just 45,000 AAdvantage Miles/person one-way. This will be rising by a staggering 78% to 80,000 AAdvantage Miles one-way from 22 March 2016 – welcome to the “New American”!
– Taxes and fees for flights from Doha to Auckland – $37.85
– Taxes and fees for flights from Auckland to Doha – $25.95
Booking Using Avios
Right now it would appear that, although BA.com is showing availability (and it’s not phantom availability because I’ve booked a flight), the website won’t allow you to book a flight. This is the message you get when you try to book:
And the Avios Reward Flight calculator tool, so often useful in helping you to figure out the cost of an award, doesn’t even recognise the existence of the new route just yet:
So I took the website’s advice and I called up to see what the cost of the award would be.
It turned out that the BA reservations staff were having the same issue as I was having online! I kept attempting to book the award online and via the British Airways call centres all weekend but I kept coming across the same issue so, I’m really sorry, but I can’t tell you what the cost is going to be.
What I can tell you is that you’ll need a lot more Avios than you’ll need AAdvantage Miles and you’ll almost certainly pay a lot more “carrier imposed fees” as well.
I’ve Booked! (Tentatively)
When I saw the award availability, temptation got the better of me and, as things stand, I’m booked to fly an epically long journey between London and Auckland connecting to the second ever service out of Doha:
In case any of you are wondering what the travel time for this trip is, I can tell you that it’s in excess of 30 hours when you include the layover in Doha….and I’m not yet sure how I feel about that 🙂
At just 60,000 AAdvantage Miles that’s a very good award redemption (and I quite like Auckland as a city). Add to that the fact that, come 22 March, this same award will cost 85,000 AAdvantage Miles (42% more) so you can hopefully see why I’m tempted to see what this flight is like sooner rather than later.
However, to be honest, there’s a good chance I won’t end up taking this particular flight because I’m struggling to get back in time for a Birthday I’m not prepared to miss…but I’ll keep checking for availability and, if that fails, I’ve got my eye on a few other dates that may work better for me.
Qatar Airways Business Class
One of the more minor issues with this route is that the Qatar Airways Business Class cabin on their 777-200LR aircraft (the one that will operate the Doha – Auckland route) isn’t much to get excited about. While Qatar Airways has a fantastic Business Class cabin, set out in a 1-2-1 layout, on their A380 aircraft, the Business Class cabin on the Qatar Airlines 777 fleet isn’t quite so good.
As this screenshot from SeatGuru shows, the 777-200LR Business Class cabin is set out in a 2-2-2 layout which means that not all seats have direct aisle access:
The seats, as you should be able to see from the image below, look fine but, if I’m going to be stuck on an aircraft for 16+ hours I don’t want to be climbing over someone if I need to get up and stretch and I certainly don’t want someone climbing over me if I’m tying to sleep.
The solution to this is to book one of the 2 middle seats (which is what I’d probably do) but then you don’t have the pleasure of seeing the pretty cool scenery at take off and landing at either end.
Granted this is very much a first world problem as, when you think about what passengers in the Economy Class cabin will have, these seats and layout are positively opulent, luxurious and fantastic.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that Qatar Airways has promised a new “Super Business Class seat” from November onwards and, while I’m not sure how much credence I put in that story from the airline’s CEO, you’d have to hope that if such a seat did get introduced, this would be one of the first routes to get it 🙂
Bottom Line
Emirates has already commenced flights from Dubai to Auckland so the idea of a super-long flight from the Middle East to New Zealand isn’t new…but you can’t book Emirates awards as easily as Qatar Airways awards and the Doha – Auckland route will be a little longer. That makes this a milestone route…until Singapore Airlines beats it for distance with its Singapore – New York route scheduled for some time in 2018.
As I’ve already shown, I’m pretty keen to try this route out if, for no other reason, to see just how tough it is to stay sane when you’re confined to an aircraft cabin for over 16 hours (even in a premium cabin)…this is something I wouldn’t even begin to contemplate in Economy Class.
In my last post on this matter I said that I’ll believe that this route is happening when the first flight actually departs Doha and I stand by that for now….but there’s no harm in booking awards in the hopes that it does.
[…] commercial route” and, while I found award availability for early December quite easily (as I posted earlier in the year), I simply couldn’t find the time in my schedule to actually do the […]