Qatar Airways Privilege Club Adopts Avios From March - Good or Bad?

In a surprise move, Qatar Airways today announced they would be ditching their own “Qmiles” for Avios from late March. Currently, Qatar Airways Privilege Club members earn Qmiles, Qpoints and Qcredits. If you’re confused, go check out our ultimate Qatar Airways Privilege Club guide here.

Essentially the Qmiles will be replaced for Avios on a 1:1 ratio. These are the miles members earn from flying, co-branded credit cards, shopping etc. and can then redeem them for flights and upgrades.

IAG Loyalty owns and operates the Avios loyalty program, which is also the native reward currency found on British Airways Executive Club, Iberia’s Iberia Plus, Vueling and Aer Lingus AerClub.

What happens to my Qmiles?

The program will switch to Avios from late March, and all member points that haven’t been redeemed will be converted on a 1:1 ratio to Avios.

What About Qcredits And Points?

While the reward side of the Privilege Club program will Switch to Avios, the Qcredits and Qpoints will remain. Qcredits are earned by flying and allow members to use these to upgrade flights or redeem for extra luggage. As a reward for reaching Gold and Platinum, members also get gifted Qcredits (enough for a business class flight), so it’s a pretty cool perk! On the other side, Qpoints (aka tier points/status credits) are what is needed to climb in the status rank from nothing to Platinum and are earned by flying Qatar Airways or its partners.

Good news or bad news?

At this stage, we know very little about this move by Qatar Airways. As it stands, Qatar Airways Privilege Club is actually a very lucrative frequent flyer program; the award chart is pretty compelling; however, there’s one big downside: there are hardly any good transfer partners! This could potentially mean there’s a good upside when Privilege Club joins Avios. For example, Iberia and Executive Club have a miles pooling feature; we might see something similar with Qatar Airways?

The most successful loyalty programs in the world all have one thing in common: credit cards. Currently, the countries and card programs with Qatar Airways Privilege Club as an option are extremely limited. Even in countries such as the US, they are not a direct transfer partner on Amex Membership Rewards.

No doubt, with the intro of Avios, we will see a lot more co-branded Qatar Airways card products popping up internationally.

The only downside could be that Qatar Airways adopts a similar award chart to British Airways; while these are good for short-haul flights, Avios redemptions long haul are rather appalling.

Time will tell how this plays out, and no doubt, we will soon learn more about the specifics of the partnership!