Qatar Airways has just announced that it is to adopt Avios as its reward currency.

Here's a cut and paste from my own article:

"Qatar Airways has announced that it is to adopt Avios as its reward currency. From some point in late March, the airlines will drop Qmiles, the currency of its existing loyalty programme. If you currently have a Qatar Privilege Club account, your existing Qmiles balance will be converted into Avios at the rate of 1:1. If you have a Qatar Privilege Club account, note that Qpoints and Qcredits will not change. There will also be no change to the current Qmiles expiry rules when the currency switches to Avios.

It's not clear what this means to UK Avios collectors. The announcement this morning has been done to give Privilege Club members the required advanced notice of major changes to the programme. There will be a further announcement in a couple of weeks which will let us know exactly how the new relationship will work in practice. You can, of course, already use Avios to book flights on Qatar Airways. To that extent, this is not a revolutionary change.

We don’t know if it will be possible to use ‘Combine My Avios’ to move Avios directly to and from British Airways Executive Club and Qatar Privilege Club. Even if you can, why would you? The benefits won’t be totally clear until we compare reward charts, taxes and charges. Qatar Airways has promised its members that its own reward charts will be unchanged.

If you can move Avios between the programmes, it will open up new partnership opportunities. You can convert Qmiles into Accor Live Limitless points, for example, so it may soon be possible to move Avios into Accor points. Privilege Club has different hotel and car hire partners to British Airways, which would broaden your collecting opportunities.

Some readers may find it more profitable to credit flights to Privilege Club and not Executive Club. Unless the schemes are fully aligned, certain classes of ticket on certain airlines will earn more Avios in one scheme than the other. Some readers may find they want to earn status in Privilege Club instead of Executive Club, given that they no longer need to give up earning Avios to do so.

We’ll obviously be looking at all this in detail as more information emerges.

All we know officially for now is that:

“IAG Loyalty and Qatar Airways are working to introduce new customer benefits from the partnership, as well as more ways to earn and collect Avios around the world in the coming months.”

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive His Excellency Mr Akbar Al Baker, 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. 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 clarity, Qatar Airways is not buying an equity stake in IAG Loyalty. It will remain a wholly owned subsidiary of International Airlines Group. It’s not clear, economically, how the swap from Qmiles to Avios will be treated in terms of the Qatar Airways balance sheet.

PS. Here’s something you can do whilst you wait

Qatar Privilege Club is, until 31st March, offering 2,000 Qmiles as a bonus for signing up. You don’t need to take a flight. You receive the Qmiles immediately. In late March, these 2,000 Qmiles will become 2,000 Avios. There is a good chance that you will be able to move them across to British Airways Executive Club. If you DO take a Qatar Airways flight before 30th September, however, you will earn between 3,000 and 5,000 additional bonus Qmiles depending on your travel class."

Our full article which includes relevant links is here: https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/0...s-drop-qmiles/