Qatar Airways launches Black Friday deals for the Americas

Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of the site. Traveling For Miles has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Traveling For Miles and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Terms apply to all credit card welcome offers, earning rates and benefits and some credit card benefits will require enrollment. For more details please see the disclosures found at the bottom of every page.

With a week to go to turkey day, Qatar Airways has announced a couple of Black Friday promotions for the Americas. The promotions cover departures from the United States, Canada, and Brazil, and offer discounts of up to $350/CA$350 and the chance for flyers to earn bonus Avios and Qpoints.

Earn bonus Avios and Qpoints (16-17 Nov.)

Members of the Qatar Airways Privilege Club (free to join here) can earn 5,000 bonus Avios and 25 Qpoints when booking a Business Class fare by 17 November 2023.

Economy Class bookings made by 17 November 2023 will earn 5,000 bonus Avios only.

Link to the promotion page (USA/Canada/Brazil).

Key terms:

• Booking Period: 16 November 2023 – 17 November 2023.
• Travel Period: 30 December 2023 – 31 October 2024 (Return only from 21 January 2024).
• To be eligible for this offer, members need to ensure to quote their Privilege Club membership number at the time of booking or check-in.
• Members will earn bonus Avios based on the cabin of travel for the first leg of their ticket.
• Offer is applicable only for flights marketed and operated by Qatar Airways.
• Members may use this offer more than once during the offer period.
• Offer is not applicable for tickets issued prior to booking period start date and after booking period end date.
• Existing tickets issued prior to the offer booking period, reissued during the offer period will not be eligible for the promotional bonus.

Note: this offer is only applicable Privilege Club members residing in the following countries/states:

Antigua And Barbuda, Anguilla, Netherlands Antilles, Argentina, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Republic Of Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Falkland Island, Grenada, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts And Nevis, Cayman Islands, St. Lucia, Martinique, Montserrat, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, St Pierre and Miquelon, Puerto Rico, Paraguay, St. Helena, Suriname, El Salvador, St Maarten, Turks And Caicos Islands, Trinidad And Tobago, U.S. Minor Islands, United States Of America, Uruguay, St Vincent & Grenadines, Venezuela, British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands.

Full terms and conditions can be found on the promotion page (USA/Canada/Brazil)

Save on Economy & Business Class fares (16-24 Nov.)

Book on qatarairways.com or on the mobile app by 24 November 2023, to get up to $350/CA$350 off Business Class fares and up to $150/CA$150 off Economy Class fares.

Link to the promotion page (USA/Canada/Brazil).

Key terms:

• Booking period: 16-24 November 2023
• Travel period: 30 December 2023 – 31 October 2024 (Return only from 21 January 2024)
• Blackout Dates (Outbound): 15 May 2024 – 30 July 2024
• Blackout Dates (Inbound): 20 June 2024 – 15 September 2024
• Minimum Stay: 7 days or first Sunday
• Maximum Stay: 1 month
• Fares displayed already include all applicable discounts from this offer. The discount is only applied to the base fare. Any other taxes, service fees or standard market charges will be payable and displayed at the time of booking.
• Fares are roundtrip, per person, and include all applicable taxes, fees and fuel surcharges (which are subject to change due to currency fluctuations). The breakdown will be shown during the online booking process.
• The offer is applicable on Economy Class up to $150/CA$150 and Business Class up to $350/CA$350, seats are limited and are subject to availability.
• The incentive is valid on Qatar Airways operated one-way and return flight itineraries worldwide, excluding codeshare and interline partnerships.
• In case of involuntary flight cancellation, the passenger can rebook and change dates or destination to any alternative Qatar Airways operated flight.
• Any change or cancellation less than 3 hours prior to the stated time of departure will be considered as no-show, whereby no-show penalties will apply.
• For travel involving multiple booking classes, the most restrictive fare rules apply to the entire itinerary.

USA specific terms

The offer is valid on flight itineraries from/to the following Qatar Airways operated airports:

Departure Airports: Atlanta (ATL), Boston (BOS), Chicago (ORD), Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Houston (IAH), Los Angeles (LAX), Miami (MIA), New York (JFK), Philadelphia (PHL), San Francisco (SFO), Seattle (SEA), and Washington D.C. (IAD).

Destinations (Economy Class): Amman (AMM), Bahrain (BAH), Bangalore (BLR), Beijing (BJS), Chongqing (CKG), Colombo (CMB), Cochin (COK), Cape Town (CPT), Doha (DOH), Durban (DUR), Hanoi (HAN), Hong Kong (HKG), Johannesburg (JNB), Kilimanjaro (JRO), Kathmandu (KTM), Kuala Lumpur (KUL), Lusaka (LUN), the Maldives (MLE), the Seychelles (SEZ), Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), Shanghai (SHA), Zanzibar (ZNZ).

Destinations (Business Class): Amman (AMM), Baku (BAK), Mumbai (BOM), Beijing (BJS), Cairo (CAI), Colombo (CMB), Cochin (COK), Cape Town (CPT), Doha (DOH), Dar es Salaam (DAR), New Delhi (DEL), Dubai (DXB), Entebbe (EBB), Yerevan (EVN), Goa (GOI), Hanoi (HAN), Hong Kong (HKG), Johannesburg (JNB), Kilimanjaro (JRO), Kathmandu (KTM), Kuala Lumpur (KUL), the Maldives (MLE), Nairobi (NBO), the Seychelles (SEZ), Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), Singapore (SIN), Zanzibar (ZNZ).

Canada specific terms

The offer is valid on flight itineraries from/to the following Qatar Airways operated airports:

Departure Airports: Montréal-Trudeau International Airport (YUL).

Destinations (Economy Class): New Delhi (DEL), Cochin (COK), Cape Town (CPT), Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), Colombo (CMB), Zanzibar (ZNZ), Kuala Lumpur (KUL), Kilimanjaro (JRO), Johannesburg (JNB).

Destinations (Business Class): Cochin (COK), Cape Town (CPT), Colombo (CMB), the Maldives (MLE), Dubai (DXB), Mumbai (BOM), Amman (AMM), New Delhi (DEL), Nairobi (NBO), Hanoi (HAN), Johannesburg (JNB).

Brazil specific terms

The offer is valid on flight itineraries from/to the following Qatar Airways operated airports:

Departure Airport: São Paulo (GRU)

Destinations (Economy Class): Addis Ababa, Beijing, Bangkok, Mumbai, Cairo, Guangzhou, Delhi, Doha, Dubai, Kathmandu, Maldives, Seychelles, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore.

Destinations (Business Class): Addis Ababa, Beijing, Bangkok, Cairo, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Colombo, Delhi, Dubai, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Kathmandu, Lusaka, Melbourne, Maldives, Nairobi, Perth, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Tokyo.

Full terms and conditions can be found on the promotion page (USA/Canada/Brazil)

Quick thoughts

Discounts and bonus are always nice, but these are promotions with which you have to be quite careful because they’re opaque and pretty restrictive.

Firstly, the bonus Avios/Qpoints promotion is only running until the end of tomorrow and if you haven’t already been planning a Qatar Airways booking, 5,000 bonus Avios and a few Qpoints shouldn’t be enough to rush you into a booking.

If you have a booking in mind and can find a fare that works for you, the bonus Avios (and Qpoints if you’re booking Business Class) should just be viewed as an unexpected bonus. Everyone else should probably ignore this offer.

Secondly, with the second promotion it’s hard to tell just how good the discounts are and how big of a discount you’re getting because, as always, Qatar Airways says that the discounts are already included in the fares when you’re presented with the search results.

If you’ve been tracking fares on a route you’re interested in booking, you may be able to tell just how much Qatar Airways has knocked of what it was charging before today, otherwise, you’ll probably have no idea if you’re looking at a discounted fare or not.

Thirdly, these promotions are not valid on all of the routes that Qatar Airways operates (far from it!) and they’re not even valid for travel from all the cities in the Americas that Qatar Airways serves (Canada gets a particularly bad deal here).

Make sure you read the terms and conditions carefully before you start searching for deals as if your preferred destination may not be included in this promotion.

Bottom line

Overall, this may be a nice couple of promotions for some readers but, on the whole, most people will probably be underwhelmed.

The bonus Avios on offer in the first promotion are not enough to warrant making any new bookings, and the number of destinations excluded from the second promotion (especially of you’re viewing it from a Canada or Brazil perspective) is disappointing so there isn’t really much to get excited about here.

It’s probably still worth checking to see if any good deals have been loaded into the systems just in case there’s a killer fare buried in there somewhere (let’s not lose sight of the fact that Qatar Airways is one of the best airlines in the world so what you’re paying for will be pretty good … at least in Business Class), but I don’t think anyone should be getting too excited about what their searches may turn up.

Let me know in the comments if you find any Qatar Airways fares worth bragging about (search here).