Earlier in the year, Qatar Airways made some changes to their Privilege Club frequent flyer program,ย removing offline processing of award tickets via their call centre among other things.
Come 27 May 2018, Qatar Airways is implementing further “enhancements” to their Privilege Club program. Most of these changes will affect passengers booked on Economy Class fares as well as award bookings.
The Good
Increased Qpoints earning in Economy Class
In Qatar Airways Privilege Club, your membership tier is determined by how many Qpoints you earn within a membership year. From 27 May 2018, Qpoints earn rates in Economy Saver, Economy Value and Economy Flex fare buckets will be increasing. Currently these are the earn rates for a return trip to London on Qatar Airways:
Economy Saver consists of fares in the N,Q and S buckets, Value are those in the K,L,M,V buckets while Flex occupies the B,H and Y buckets. Economy Promo fares will not see increased earn rates.
Still using the example of a flight to London, Economy Promo fares earning 40 Qpoints costs S$1,093 over a random date. On that same date, an Economy Saver ticket costs S$1,237. While it isn’t stated how much the increase in earn rates would be, if it is going to be increased to 80 Qpoints, I might actually pay that little bit extra as it’ll get me ever so closer to elite status in Privilege Club.
While the new chart isn’t out yet, I’ll be keeping a close tab on the increased earn rates come 27 May 2018.
Miles for award upgrades will be tiered to fare bucket
In the current system, the difference in Qmiles required for an upgrade from a revenue Economy Class ticket to a Business Class is only 18,000 Qmiles between an Economy Flexi fare and an Economy Class fare in any other revenue fare bucket. Come 27 May however, Qatar Airways is slashing the cost of an upgrade from an Economy Class Flex fare to Business Class award upgrade in half compared to using miles to upgrade yourself from any other Economy Class revenue fare to Business Class. Note that only fares in Economy Class Saver and above will be eligible for an upgrade using miles. Economy Class promo fares, such as the fares which you’ll be booked on if you book tickets during Qatar Airways 48-hour flash sales are not eligible for an upgrade with miles.
This is currently how much it’ll cost you to perform a one-way upgrade from Economy Class to Business Class from Singapore through to London via Doha:
If the redemption for an upgrade from Economy to Business Class is indeed going to be halved for Economy Flex passengers compared to Economy Class passengers on revenue Saver and Value tickets, at 30,000 Qmiles for aย one-way upgrade from Singapore all the way to London that’s definitely a very good price.
Easier sharing of miles and higher purchase limits
Currently, there is a minimum transfer amount of 3,000 Qmiles required should you wish to transfer it to another member’s Privilege Club account or purchase miles. This will be reduced to 1,000 Qmilesย with immediate effect. They are also increasing the amount of Qmiles you’re able to buy, gift or transfer from 60,000 to 250,000 Qmiles per calendar year.
Qatar Airways charges for mileage transfers so if you wish to “pool” Qmiles, this will come with a fee and this depends on how many Qmiles you’re transferring.
The Bad
New award ticket booking fees
When it comes to redeeming your precious miles and points, the only real cost you’re paying are the taxes and surcharges which are imposed on your ticket. However, Qatar Airways is imposing a new award ticket fee which increases with your booking class:
This fee applies per sector and according to Qatar Airways, they define a sector as one which may consist of one or more flights. From my understanding, a return trip from Singapore to London is considered 2 sectors so you’ll have to pay US$100 extra when redeeming your ticket with Qmiles.
This is just ridiculous in my opinion to impose a fee to use your miles, in essence Qatar Airways is penalizing its frequent flyers who choose to accrue miles with them instead of other airline partners.
Removal of “offline” processing
Qatar Airways has been aggressively pushing every service imaginable online this year. From basic profile changes to things like amendments of award tickets and from 27 May 2018, you will not be able to perform any amendments to both revenue and award tickets booked with Qatar Airways at their ticket offices or via their call centres. Everything has to be submitted via email. This presents several issues especially on the aspect of changes to tickets be it redemption or revenue. It’s funny cause Qatar Airways actually called this an enhancement and I’m really struggling to find the smallest reason as to why this is an enhancement.
Requests done via email are not immediate and there will be a lead time involved. The difference in a few hours can results in a particular fare bucket being made unavailable or that Saver ticket being redeemed by someone if you are going to perform a date change or flight change to your booking. Although Qatar Airways is expecting this as they did ask to provide “New travel date with sector (for date change requests) with 2 alternate dates in case of no availability on preferred date.”,ย this still isn’t feasible as by the time my email is read, redemption tickets on the 2 alternate dates I’m looking at might already be gone as well.
Concluding thoughts
While there are several decent enhancements that are coming on 27 May 2018, what really intrigues me is how they are going to charge people for redeeming their miles and moving everything “online”. I always had a good impression of the Privilege Club program in that it is one of the easier ways to reach oneworld elite status, but with these “enhancements” coming, I might have to say goodbye.
Thank for sharing! I’m trying to use up the remaining miles I have with them by topping up for an economy to business upgrade, was wondering if their miles purchase rates are going to change as well?