BAD NEWS: No More British Airways Avios or Tier Points On Great Qatar Airways Fares

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UPDATE 3 November 2016: British Airways has now announced that this was a “mistake” –for more details click this link – but I’m going to keep this post up as a maker for the future…just incase BA goes ahead wit this change after all.

This is still very much a story in progress and the closest things we appear to have from an official channel are some tweets from the BA Twitter account…but the news isn’t good.

It would appear as if the cheaper Qatar Airways Business Class fares (the ones that book into fare code R) no longer earn any Avios or Tier points. It would also appear that this change has been put through with absolutely notice to customers whatsoever.

British Airways No Longer Awarding Tier Points & Avios For R Fares On Qatar Airways

The original poster in this thread on Flyertalk has reported on a conversation she had with a British Airways Executive Club representative who confirmed that “R” coded Business Class fares will no longer earn tier points or Avios with immediate effect.

Per CharlotteC:

I spoke to somebody at BAEC who confirmed that at Qatar’s behest you can earn neither BAEC tier points or Avios when you make an R class booking. Qatar requested it as part of their code sharing agreement with BA and it is likely to be like this for the foreseeable future. Time to rebel… BA lady was incredibly apologetic!

GodSaveThePoints blog got his own confirmation from British Airways too:

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British Airways appears to have removed R fares from the Qatar Airways Avios & Tier points earnings table on its website…..

british-airways-qatar-table

…but they haven’t removed the mention of R fare codes from the Avios Calculator tool:

avios-calulatior-showing-qarar-r-fare

Unfortunately the BA Twitter account confirmed that the Avios calculator is wrong….

screen-shot-2016-11-03-at-02-26-12

….so it looks as if this change is real.

The Issues

There are two issues at play here:

  • Qatar Airways R fares offer some of the best Business Class deals you can find anywhere (I publish them regularly on the blog). Not being able to earn Avios or Tier Points from these fares is a hammer blow to British Airways Executive Club (BAEC) members.
  • If this is a genuine change to Avios and Tier Point earning it’s beyond deplorable that British Airways and Qatar have introduced this with absolutely no notice. What makes this all even worse is that there’s nothing coming out of British Airways confirming that existing bookings will be ok.

Why Has Qatar Airways Done This?

Probably to save money.

When a traveler flys on Qatar Airways and credits those flight to the BAEC, Qatar Airways has to pay British Airways for the Avios that are then deposited into the traveler’s BAEC account. I’m not too sure if any payment is made for Tier Points but they may well come at a price too.

The same thing happens when Qatar Airways flights are credited to any other oneworld loyalty programs and, as I highly doubt that there are significant numbers of travelers flying on BA and AA and crediting their flights to Qatar’s Privilege Club (which would see those airline pay Qatar airways for miles), the net result could be quite expensive for Qatar Airways.

Thoughts

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of British Airways as it is but, if it doesn’t honor the Avios and Tier Points earning rates that were in place at the time customers made their bookings, the airline will have reached a new low.

As it is BA’s management has plummeted even further in my estimation by putting through a change without any advance warning, but screwing over customers with existing bookings would be beyond the pale.

There are words to describe the kind of people and organisations that treat customers like this but none of them are appropriate to use in this blog.

There will be hundreds (possibly thousands) of travelers who have already purchased R fare Business Class tickets, in good faith, with the understanding that they would be earning Avios and Tier Points for their trip….and now there’s a chance that they won’t earn a thing.

It will be interesting to see how the other oneworld airlines react to this news and whether or not Qatar Airways attempts to get them to remove earnings for R fares.

As things stand R fares still appear on the American Airlines website…

american-airlines-qatar-fares

….but for how much longer?

Well, to that point, I think AAdvantage members may be safe….at least for the time being.

Qatar Airways has no ownership interest in American Airlines and, as far as we know, it isn’t negotiating a new codeshare agreement with the American carrier either…so there really isn’t too much similarity with BA’s situation.

I also suspect that, because most of the great R Business Class fares originate in Europe for flights to Asia, the Middle East and Africa, there is a significantly larger number of Avios collectors crediting Qatar flights to the BAEC than there are American Airlines flyers crediting Qatar flights to the AAdvantage program.

It’s possible that Qatar Airways isn’t having an issue with AAdvantage members costing it money.

On top of all that it’s worth remembering that American Airlines isn’t exactly playing nice with the Middle Eastern carriers right now. This makes it less likely to acceded to a request from Qatar Airways….especially a request that would benefit Qatar Airways financially with no obvious upside to American.

Bottom Line

I have a lot of sympathy for BAEC members right now because it looks like BA and Qatar have been about as underhand as it’s possible to be in this situation.

There’s no excuse for putting though a change like this without some sort of advance notice and there’s certainly no excuse for not confirming that existing bookings will be honored.

I’ve said before that there are travelers who credit their flights to the BAEC that would probably be better off crediting their flights to the AAdvantage program and, if R fares continue to count for AAdvantage purposes, that pool of travelers just got a whole lot bigger.

5 COMMENTS

  1. sad… i had exactly the same thing with an A class fare on Iberia, which gains half of its tear points since Oct 1st but the calculator still mentions the full earnings… when complaining they just said they very sorry but the information on the calculator was wrong… i’ve booked an R class fare on Qatar for next year… grrrr

    • It will be interesting to see how BA & Qatar handle the issue of customers with existing R fare bookings. I have no legal background whatsoever but, from purely a layman’s perspective, this would appear to be a case of the airlines changing the terms of a sale after the fact…and that can’t be right.

      Even if there is no legal obligation on the part of the airlines to honour the tier point/Avios earnings I think it would be a huge PR disaster for them not to….it’s wait and see time now.

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