Buying miles & points strategically can represent a great value, especially for luxury travel. The Qatar Airways Privilege Club program has just launched its latest promotion on purchased Avios, and it has the potential to be a great deal, even if you’re looking to acquire another “flavor” of Avios. However, there are a lot of ways to acquire Qatar Airways Avios, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend outright buying them.
With this offer, if you’re eligible for a 60% bonus, you’d receive a total of 400,000 Avios at a cost of $5,750, which is a rate of 1.44 cents per Avios.
How many Qatar Airways Avios can you purchase?
Qatar Airways Privilege Club limits members to purchasing 250,000 Avios per account per calendar year, before any bonuses. Note that in order to be eligible to purchase Avios, you must have earned at least 1,000 Avios in your account since enrollment, though that could be through any means (like transferring points from a partner).
The first thing to keep in mind is that as long as you have some account activity and have your accounts linked for a minimum amount of time, you can transfer Avios freely between Aer Lingus, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, and Qatar Airways. That gives you a lot of flexibility.
The other main way that the value of Qatar Airways Avios has increased is that nowadays Qatar Airways restricts a lot of its business class award space to those redeeming Avios. That means availability is very limited when redeeming through programs that might have better redemption rates, like American AAdvantage.
As far as Qatar Airways Privilege Club redemption rates go, here’s how much you can roughly expect to pay, pending award availability:
- A one-way US to Doha award costs 35,000 Avios in economy or 70,000 Avios in business class
- A one-way US to Delhi award costs 40,000 Avios in economy or 80,000 Avios in business class
- A one-way US to Maldives award costs 42,500 Avios in economy or 85,000 Avios in business class
- A one-way US to Bangkok award costs 47,500 Avios in economy or 95,000 Avios in business class
- A one-way US to Auckland award costs 60,000 Avios in economy or 120,000 Avios in business class
I also like some of the unique partner awards Privilege Club offers, including for travel on airlines like Bangkok Airways, JetBlue LATAM, Middle East Airlines, RwandAir, and Virgin Australia. Being able to redeem for JetBlue Mint is a particularly good opportunity.
A great solo travel tip spotted this week on One Mile at a Time.
