Qatar Drops Qmiles for Avios
Update 3/23/22: This went live yesterday and you are now able to transfer between the British Airways Avios program and Qatar Airways Avios. You can’t do it from Iberia and Aer Lingus, the other two Avios programs, but you can transfer those points to British Airways first and then move them over. You can link your accounts here.
Original Post
Qatar Airways has made a major announcement that could open more opportunities for travelers. The Doha-based airline has revealed that it will soon adopt Avios as its rewards currency for the Privilege Club loyalty program. Avios are currently used by several other Oneworld members such as British Airways and Iberia and will now replace Qmiles as well.
If you you have a miles balance in your Privilege Club account, there’s no need to worry. All Privilege Club members will have a seamless transition into the loyalty program’s new reward currency. Existing Qmiles balances will automatically convert to Avios at a 1:1 ratio. The switch will take effect some time in late March 2022.
Avios is the global loyalty currency used by British Airways Executive Club, AerClub, Iberia Plus and Vueling Club, and will soon, Qatar Airways Privilege Club. That will give Avios a total of more than 35 million frequent flyers worldwide once Qatar makes the switch.
“The transition from Qmiles to Avios marks a ground-breaking new era for Privilege Club, enabling our loyal members to participate in the most compelling loyalty network and the largest portfolio of partners in the industry.” said Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker about the switch. “As the World’s Best Airline, Qatar Airways continues to redefine loyalty through the adoption of exciting digital innovations to create unique world-class experiences for our members. We look forward to revealing more details of this exciting change over the coming weeks, as we explore even more ways to reward our valued members both on and off the ground.”
For now that’s all the information that Qatar has made available. We’ll have to see how it will all work in the coming weeks. For now for example you can easily convert Avios from British Airlines to Iberia. So a similar setup could eventually be put in place for Qatar as well.
You can check for more details at www.qatarairways.com/Avios and we should learn more over the next month.
Let us know in the comments what you think about this switch!
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
It’s been confirmed by Qatar Airways Privilege Club that Avios “will be fully transferable between Privilege Club and British Airways Executive Club”, this allows travellers on both airlines to pool their Avios into a single account.
In addition, BA and Qatar Airways will increase the number of Avios-based reward seats across their flights, to accomodate an expected jump in demand once both airlines are sharing a common currency’.
Wife and I joined Privilege Club today and got 2500 miles each for joining. Should convert to Avios and go into our family pooling account. 5,000 free Avios.