Last week, Qatar’s national carrier made the bold announcement that the airline will drop their QMiles currency in favour of Avios - the scheme of BA’s owner, IAG. This is an interesting development for the industry - but comes with a few caveats. 

What’s happening?

From some time in March (not yet determined), Qatar Airways will swap out the Q Miles scheme for Avios. Initially, the change is likely to be cosmetic to Qatar Airways Privilege Club members as QMiles will convert 1:1 to the Avios currency. In plain terms, if you had 50,000 QMiles today this will swap directly to 50,000 Avios once implemented. Most changes are likely to be on the backend systems which Qatar Airways interacts with as opposed to any crazy changes to how the system works for members. 

How big a deal is this?

As the French would say, comme ci, comme ça. On the one hand, frequent flyer programmes are extremely lucrative businesses for airlines and to drop your own award currency in favour of another is not too common. Equally, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise as Qatar Airways owns 25.1% of IAG Group. Qatar may have worked out that it is cost effective to merge the backend of their programme with an airline that they own a significant portion of and also have joint businesses with. The airline’s famously opinionated leader, His Excellency Akbar Al Bakar said “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”. This seems to suggest access to Avios will enable Privilege Club members to benefit from more access to award flights.

What is the impact on award seats for British Airways and Qatar Airways?

According to the reliable Australian-based frequent flyer website, Executive Traveller, British Airways, Qatar Airways (and presumably other IAG airlines) will increase the number of reward seats available on their flights due to the increased number of members having access to the same pot of seats. 

Today, British Airways release a minimum of the following number of seats on each flight:

• Economy: 8 seats (short and long haul)

• Premium Economy: 2 (long haul only)

• Business Class: 4 (short haul) and 8 (long haul)

• First Class: 0 (although you will find non-guaranteed availability)

Qatar Airways currently do not have any guaranteed award seat availability that I can find evidence of.

Will prices of award flights change?

Again, according to Executive Traveller, there will not be a devaluation after the Avios scheme has been implemented. However, what airlines say and do is often two different things and you cannot rule out seats become more expensive to redeem using Avios. 

Will I be able to move Avios between British Airways (or any other IAG airline) to Qatar Airways?

Yes, you will be able to move Avios between the different schemes that are using the currency according to a Qatar PR representative. This is like how you can quite clunkily move Avios between British Airways and Iberia to then use on Iberia’s website.

What’s the impact for all Avios members?

The initial benefit will be more instantaneous access to seats on one of the world’s best airlines (Qatar not BA). More importantly is the ability to access lower prices for seats on Avios member airlines - which goes multiple ways for each carrier. Effectively, you could see a member of any of the schemes having the following strategy for Avios spend:

• British Airways for European short haul with Reward Flight Saver costs that have significantly lower taxes than regular redemptions.

• Iberia to South America from Madrid which are not subject to high UK departure taxes.

• Qatar Airways for pretty much anywhere in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania.

The changes within Avios could potentially make it one of the most flexible frequent flyer currencies - providing too much doesn’t change after the implementation of the currency at Qatar.

What could a hypothetical future for Avios be?

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Bakar is currently also the Chairman of the oneworld alliance. This move to Avios for Qatar Airways could also be part way to making it easier for members of the alliance to upgrade their flights more easily across the alliance. Could we see a concerted effort to have an alliance-wide frequent flyer currency? This would seem unlikely but possible. We could feasibly head towards a space whereby at the least airlines that Qatar Airways have a stake in, namely Cathay Pacific, adopt Avios or at the least make Asia Miles convertible into Avios? Or maybe we could see Avios become the currency of the smaller airlines within the alliance such as Finnair, S7, Malaysian and Fiji Airways whilst American, JAL and Qantas maintain their own currencies. Again, this is pure speculation, but with Qatar heading up oneworld and the airline making a strategic shift to Avios this may be a possibility.

I for one am quite excited for the potentially possibilities of this new tie up between Avios and Qatar Airways!

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