Qatar Airways Restricts Award Bookings For Others With Absurd New Rule

Qatar Airways Privilege Club has just added new restrictions regarding who you can redeem your Avios for. Essentially, you have to create a list of potential nominees who you can redeem your rewards for. While I can on the surface understand the value of this in terms of preventing fraud and bartering of rewards, the execution leaves a lot to be desired, and there’s one rule that will lock many people out of being able to redeem.

Along those lines, Privilege Club has just greatly limited who members can redeem their Avios for, thanks to two new initiatives:

• With the new “My List” feature, Privilege Club members can only redeem rewards for up to four other Privilege Club members, and they have to be saved to the account; once added, they have to stay connected to the account for at least six months before being removed, limiting the ability to cycle through redemption options
• There’s also the “Family & Friends” feature, whereby Privilege Club members can redeem rewards for up to six other people who are not Privilege Club members, and they also have to be saved to the account

Just to be crystal clear, this restriction is specific to Privilege Club, regardless of the airline you’re redeeming on. Conversely, if you book through another loyalty program (even if it’s for travel on Qatar Airways), you’d be subjected to the rules of that program.

That’s fair enough. What’s going to cause a lot more frustration is the rules. If you just transfer points from bank programs, you’re now technically out of luck, and can no longer redeem Avios for others. Instead, you need to actually credit a flight to the program, or have a co-branded credit card from the program. Bleh.

What do you make of Privilege Club’s new redemption restrictions?