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The headline didn't make this seem like too big of a deal and details were thin on the ground. Unfortunately, now that the terms and conditions are online for all to see, the news isn't good.
Back in early May, Qatar Airways Privilege Club members received an email with the headline “Spending Avios is Changing.” It described a new “My List” feature alongside the existing Family & Friends programme, framed as a way to make booking award flights for other people more secure.
The headline didn’t make this seem like too big of a deal and details were thin on the ground. Unfortunately, now that the terms and conditions are online for all to see, the news isn’t good.
The key change
Qatar Airways has historically allowed Privilege Club members to redeem their Avios for anyone. As of June 2026, that’s no longer the case and it’s now much, much harder for a lot of Privilege Club members to book Avios redemptions for others through Privilege Club.
As of June 2026, there are only two routes by which such redemptions are possible.
Redemption route 1 – “My List”
“My List” is a new feature introduced by the Qatar Airways Privilege Club and, to put it simply, it’s a list of just four Privilege Club members on whom the list owner can spend their Avios through the Qatar Airways Privilege Club.
List members must:
• Be invited to join the list by the list creator
• Be 18 years of age or older
• Hold their own Privilege Club account
• Not be on anyone else’s list (a member can only belong to one list)
Each member on the list keeps their own separate Avios balance (so Avios are not pooled), but once someone joins a list, they’re locked in for a minimum of six months before they can leave or be removed.
If a member on a list deletes their account, their space on the list cannot be taken by anyone else until the deleted member’s six month period would have been up.
Link to Qatar Airways My List FAQs
Redemption route 2 – “Family & Friends”
Qatar Airways “Family & Friends” isn’t new. It has been around for at least five or six years.
It’s a feature which allows a member nominate up to six people*, including children over the age of two, who don’t hold their own Privilege Club accounts, and then pool their Avios earning into the main member’s account.
Only the main member can ever redeem that pooled balance, and it can be spent on any member of the group or on anyone already on the main member’s My List.
Other than the main member, members of a Family & Friends list must:
• Not have their own Privilege Club account
• Be 2 years old or above
*The list has been limited to 6 + the lead members since June 2026. Anyone who built a larger group before these restrictions took effect has been grandfathered in to the old rules, so existing main members who had already enrolled more than six group members before the six member restriction came into force, can keep them (maximum of nine members).
If, however, any members leave the list, their space on the list disappears and they cannot be replaced until the list drops below six members at which point the six person gap comes into effect.
Link to Qatar Airways Family & Friends FAQs
The issues
So far, things are looking restrictive enough because we now have a situation where a Privilege Club member can only use their Avios through Privilege Club on up to 10 other people – 4 from My List and 6 from Friends & Family.
But the new system becomes even more restrictive when you take a closer look at who can set up a My List and who can set up a Family & Friends List.
To start a My List or a Friends and Family group, the rules now say that the main list/group leader must meet the following conditions:
- They must have had an active Privilege Club account for at least 30 days
- They can only have one My List and one Family & Friends list
- They must have:
- Credited a flown flight to the Qatar Airways Privilege Club (this can be a Qatar Airways flight or a partner flight) or
- Credited a transaction from an eligible Qatar Airways co-branded credit card to their Privilege Club account.
Anyone who falls foul of any one of these conditions, cannot set up a My List or a Family & Friends list and so cannot use their Avios to book award flights for anyone else through Qatar Airways Privilege Club.
They can move their Avios out of Privilege Club (e.g. to the British Airways Club) and redeem for others from there (as long as they meet the other program’s criteria for booking with Avios), but they cannot redeem Avios through Privilege Club for anyone other than themselves.
Thoughts
“Harsh” doesn’t even begin to cover what this is. For a lot of Privilege Club members, this will be very bad news.
Yes, I fully understand the need for Qatar Airways to ensure that people aren’t doing anything with their Avios that’s against the rules, but limiting the My List and Family and Friends features to members who have credited a flight to Privilege Club or to people who hold a co-branded credit card seems like a step too far.
What was wrong with bringing in all the other restrictions, but allowing any member over the age of 18 to use My List and/or Friends and Family?
From a fraud prevention point of view, there would have been nothing wrong with that, but fraud prevention doesn’t appear to be the only thing Qatar Airways is attempting to do here.
The airline is very clearly also trying to force engagement with their frequent flyer program, and for most people that will involve crediting at least one flight to the Privilege Club.
Sure, Qatar Airways can do whatever it wants to with its flyer program and it has every right to, but this seems like an unnecessarily unfriendly move.
Personally, I’m not going to “suffer” as a result of these restrictions because, fortuitously, when I flew a JetBlue Mint transatlantic sector a few years ago I had nowhere useful to credit the flight, so I credited it to the Privilege Club just to earn some Avios. That makes me eligible to have a My List and a Family & Friends list should I want them.
Also fortuitously, I had Joanna credit a very short British Airways flight to Privilege Club last year just to get some activity in her Privilege Club account in case a great Avios sale appeared that we both wanted to use. So she can create a My List and a Family & Friends list as well.
People less fortunate than us and who want to be able to move Avios into the Privilege Club (from other Avios programs or from other Privilege Club partners like Citi) and then use them for others as well as themselves, will now have to find an easy way to credit a flight to the Privilege Club (getting a Qatar Airways co-branded credit card just for this purpose probably isn’t going to be the best way forward for most people).
Bottom line
Qatar Airways has made it considerably harder for some flyers to redeem Avios for others through its Privilege Club frequent flyer program.
There are now just two mechanisms by which a Privilege Club member can redeem Avios for others (through Qatar Airways) and both come with restrictions that will make life tough and/or annoying for quite a few members.
An active Privilege Club member who uses the program as somewhere to credit the flights they take will, at worst, probably just find the new restrictions irritating.
A Privilege Club member who had been using the program for Avios redemptions only, however, will probably find the new rules incredibly constraining and will have to look for an easy way to get around the My List and Family & Friends eligibility criteria.
What do you think of the changes? Are you badly affected or is this no big deal?
[HT: One Mile at a Time for flagging this]
