Nov 19, 2013, 3:20 pm
Last edit by: Prospero
Covid-19 Update:
For further information on AA awards see:
HELP DESK: MileSAAver / SAAver Award Availability - Help, Assistance & Discussion
and
AA oneworld and Other Airline Partner Award information, rules (2015 on)
N.B. Upgrades on QR book into fares not granted EQD/EQM by AA. If you're upgraded on QR, be prepared for pushback from some AA agents. You may have to submit a formal request with accompanying documentation reflecting you purchased an eligible fare class.
NOTE:AA has removed most EY and QR award access from aa.com due to a glitch booking these:
If you experience difficulties with the AA reservations system, you may be able to book by calling AA Australia (+61 2-9101-1948 ) then press 4 - or the New Zealand number (+64 09-308-4014) as an alternative - although the call center is actually in Suva, Fiji (South African agency Mindpearl) - as they can often see the inventory more reliably, and you can book.
NOTE: USA Canada travel on QR will earn EQ miles etc. in accordance with the fare class purchased.
Links:
Link to AA.com Qatar miles earning etc.
AA miles earning on QR changed 1 May 2016 (Link):
Minimum miles guarantee applies.
Checking QR award availability:
You can check QR availability on AA's site, BA's site, QF's site, www.awardnexus.com (which pulls from BA and/or QF), or the KVS tool. (A certain number of searches are free to FlyerTalk members at AwardNexus; click the "more signup options" link under the green Purchase button to sign up as a FlyerTalk member.)
When checking QR award availability, you have to check each segment individually. Both BA and QF can generate very misleading information if you try to check QR award availability all the way through [xxx-(DOH)-yyy] in one step. Be aware AA can only book 330 days out, even if you see availability farther out.
Awards on QR may not be visible to AA agents if a multi-segment itinerary is requested; broken into individual segments will generally reveal availability, however.
As well, AA Australia or New Zealand (actually MindPearl in Fiji) can often see and book AA awards on QR US-based ones might not be able to.
From danger: For AA awards, Economy is X, Business is U, First is Z. NOTE: Those with Z (First) awards may see "Z (Business Class)" shown on the QR website; this is a known glitch.
As well, QR sells intra gulf two class service as First and Economy, as AA does domestically. This can cause some issues with a Business flight including a Gulf "First" flight potentially incurring an F award redemption.
From hotelmotel: "Got my QR PNR from AA. Popped over to QR and selected seats." (AAdvantage award.)
Days of the week: To/from the USA, especially in business class, Qatar often only offers awards seats for Mon..Thu departures, not Fri..Sun departures. So makes sure you check different parts of the week, and not just always weekends (if you're not finding anything on weekends).
NOTE: At DOH / Hamad International Airport, lounges as follows:
Qatar Airways Al Safwa First Lounge (not a oneworld lounge): only accessible to those flying First Class on Qatar or oneworld airlines and QRPC Platniums flying in ticketed Business (not oneworld Emeralds flying other lower classes of service)
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge (not a oneworld lounge): only accessible to those flying Business Class on Qatar or oneworld (not oneworld Sapphire flying lower classes of service)
Oryx Lounge: Third party lounge.
Qatar Airways HIA First Class Lounge (oneworld lounge): First Class ticketed customers, Emerald members, as well as their accompanying guests, travelling on Qatar Airways and other oneworld member flights.
Qatar Airways HIA Business Class Lounge (oneworld lounge): First and Business Class ticketed customers, Emerald and Sapphire members, as well as their accompanying guests, travelling on Qatar Airways and other oneworld member flights.
Arrivals Lounges (not oneworld lounges): only accessible to those arriving in First or Business Class on Qatar Airways (not oneworld Sapphire flying other oneworld airlines or other classes of service)
See FT: QR Lounges at HIA
Selecting Qatar Airways Seats
If you want to assign a seat after booking an award, you should first try the Qatar website or app. If you experience issues, please try a partner site like Royal Jordanian, Malaysia Airlines, or Sri-Lankan. You can also reach out to the QR Twitter team to fix your record in order to be able to select seats on their own site.
- Sapphire+ status pax are temporarily allowed to use the Al Mourjan Business Lounge
- Only tickets issued on QR 157 stock are eligible for the Extending Our Commitment (EOC) rebooking policy
For further information on AA awards see:
HELP DESK: MileSAAver / SAAver Award Availability - Help, Assistance & Discussion
and
AA oneworld and Other Airline Partner Award information, rules (2015 on)
N.B. Upgrades on QR book into fares not granted EQD/EQM by AA. If you're upgraded on QR, be prepared for pushback from some AA agents. You may have to submit a formal request with accompanying documentation reflecting you purchased an eligible fare class.
NOTE:AA has removed most EY and QR award access from aa.com due to a glitch booking these:
From One Mile at a Time (link)
Bottom Line
For the time being you’ll have to call American if you want to ticket AAdvantage awards on Etihad & Qatar that aren’t for travel to & from the US or Canada. It makes sense that American took these awards “offline,” and now it also makes sense why so many passengers have been having issues with checked bags on awards.
Bottom Line
For the time being you’ll have to call American if you want to ticket AAdvantage awards on Etihad & Qatar that aren’t for travel to & from the US or Canada. It makes sense that American took these awards “offline,” and now it also makes sense why so many passengers have been having issues with checked bags on awards.
NOTE: USA Canada travel on QR will earn EQ miles etc. in accordance with the fare class purchased.
Links:
Link to AA.com Qatar miles earning etc.
AA miles earning on QR changed 1 May 2016 (Link):
Minimum miles guarantee applies.
Checking QR award availability:
You can check QR availability on AA's site, BA's site, QF's site, www.awardnexus.com (which pulls from BA and/or QF), or the KVS tool. (A certain number of searches are free to FlyerTalk members at AwardNexus; click the "more signup options" link under the green Purchase button to sign up as a FlyerTalk member.)
When checking QR award availability, you have to check each segment individually. Both BA and QF can generate very misleading information if you try to check QR award availability all the way through [xxx-(DOH)-yyy] in one step. Be aware AA can only book 330 days out, even if you see availability farther out.
Awards on QR may not be visible to AA agents if a multi-segment itinerary is requested; broken into individual segments will generally reveal availability, however.
As well, AA Australia or New Zealand (actually MindPearl in Fiji) can often see and book AA awards on QR US-based ones might not be able to.
From danger: For AA awards, Economy is X, Business is U, First is Z. NOTE: Those with Z (First) awards may see "Z (Business Class)" shown on the QR website; this is a known glitch.
As well, QR sells intra gulf two class service as First and Economy, as AA does domestically. This can cause some issues with a Business flight including a Gulf "First" flight potentially incurring an F award redemption.
From hotelmotel: "Got my QR PNR from AA. Popped over to QR and selected seats." (AAdvantage award.)
Days of the week: To/from the USA, especially in business class, Qatar often only offers awards seats for Mon..Thu departures, not Fri..Sun departures. So makes sure you check different parts of the week, and not just always weekends (if you're not finding anything on weekends).
NOTE: At DOH / Hamad International Airport, lounges as follows:
Qatar Airways Al Safwa First Lounge (not a oneworld lounge): only accessible to those flying First Class on Qatar or oneworld airlines and QRPC Platniums flying in ticketed Business (not oneworld Emeralds flying other lower classes of service)
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge (not a oneworld lounge): only accessible to those flying Business Class on Qatar or oneworld (not oneworld Sapphire flying lower classes of service)
Oryx Lounge: Third party lounge.
Qatar Airways HIA First Class Lounge (oneworld lounge): First Class ticketed customers, Emerald members, as well as their accompanying guests, travelling on Qatar Airways and other oneworld member flights.
Qatar Airways HIA Business Class Lounge (oneworld lounge): First and Business Class ticketed customers, Emerald and Sapphire members, as well as their accompanying guests, travelling on Qatar Airways and other oneworld member flights.
Arrivals Lounges (not oneworld lounges): only accessible to those arriving in First or Business Class on Qatar Airways (not oneworld Sapphire flying other oneworld airlines or other classes of service)
See FT: QR Lounges at HIA
Selecting Qatar Airways Seats
If you want to assign a seat after booking an award, you should first try the Qatar website or app. If you experience issues, please try a partner site like Royal Jordanian, Malaysia Airlines, or Sri-Lankan. You can also reach out to the QR Twitter team to fix your record in order to be able to select seats on their own site.
Qatar Airways / QR: Redeem AA Miles for Award (master thd)
Apr 10, 2019, 1:15 pm
#751
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: NYC
Posts: 213
I'm trying to book BEY-DOH-IAH in business class for May. The AA website shows availability, and BA shows 2 seats on each leg in First for BEY-DOH and Business for DOH-IAH when searched separately. However, when I try to select the QR itinerary, the website tells me that it is no longer available.
If I see each segment separately on BA, then is it really "phantom". Would an agent be able to book this ticket? This would fall under the waived fee of not being able to book on AA.com, right?
*Edit* BA now shows no BEY-DOH availability
If I see each segment separately on BA, then is it really "phantom". Would an agent be able to book this ticket? This would fall under the waived fee of not being able to book on AA.com, right?
*Edit* BA now shows no BEY-DOH availability
It is going to be a very very long travel day, and hopefully Q Suites will be worth it. Now to get the PNR to select seats.
Apr 10, 2019, 2:36 pm
#753
Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: PBI
Programs: AS MVP 75K, DL PM
Posts: 248
Data Point: Just booked MIA-PHL-DOH-WDH in J for 75,000 miles. I did a ton of different searches to get to Southern Africa in Q1 2020 and most of the Qatar availability from NA to Doha was through Philadelphia. Lots of availability through Montreal as well.
Apr 10, 2019, 2:47 pm
#754
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 4,467
Apr 10, 2019, 6:45 pm
#755
Community Director Emerita
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Anywhere warm
Posts: 33,735
Is anyone finding LAX-DOH or DOH-LAX business class availability at the end of the schedule? I've had no success from the start of January 2020 to the start of March, checking for over a month now. Other gateway cities are randomly available but never (for me) LAX.
Apr 10, 2019, 8:51 pm
#756
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: So Cal
Posts: 933
Zero luck, and I have been checking daily for a couple of weeks now. The option I have found is to transit via LHR on BA.
Apr 10, 2019, 9:11 pm
#757
Join Date: May 2013
Location: DTW
Programs: AMEX, Ritz LT-Plat Prem, Hyatt Plat, SPG Plat, Hilton Diamond, Delta Plat, United Gold, Sixt Plat
Posts: 866
I think all Qatar is gone...I checked PHL, ORD, IAH, JFK all nothing...
Apr 11, 2019, 8:04 am
#758
Moderator: Travel Buzz
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Sunny San Diego
Posts: 3,095
We did. I don't know how we got so lucky! Mr StartInSanDiego was checking the schedule regularly to get us home from South Africa in February. We had JNB-DOH on hold, with the plan to add DOH to Dallas, then Dallas to San Diego, Santa Ana or LAX. We had random segments on hold the day before our target date, just in case. Magically, at 3am PST on the AA release date, the DOH to LAX was released and we nabbed it. It hadn't been coming up for days, but there it was, on the day we wanted. There were 4 seats and we booked 2 of them, and were luckily able to put that segment on hold for a friend on the same itinerary, which she later booked using her own points. It priced at out 75.000 AA miles pp/ow. I felt like we won the lottery!
Apr 12, 2019, 11:05 am
#759
Join Date: Jul 2016
Posts: 222
Qatar has been performing some upgrades and changes to the inventory and revenue management systems over the past several weeks. I was told the work was completed earlier in the week (according to my friend who works for Amadeus Group). During the several week period is was very apparent to me that something was going on as full inventories of discount (and award) booking classes were opening up for very short intervals and at completely random times during the day. The other thing that was incredibly interesting is that during that time period you could query ExpertFlyer (or GDS) and the Flight Availability was showing ALL available classes included U and X inventories (those are normally restricted booking classes and are not publicly displayed by GDS or EF). Now that the work is complete those available classes are once again hidden from public query.
The other interesting thing I have noticed is that QR used to release a fixed amount of U business class inventory at the time the schedule opens up and then once those seats were snagged there would rarely be any more released (but on the flip side if someone cancelled and returned the U inventory it often times would return even close to flight date - especially if R was still being sold). This was a bit unique (and rather simple) to QR in that they almost sectioned off a handful of business award seats where as most modern revenue management systems are based on demand and previous year sales statistics for similar dates. Now it seems their process to release award seats may have gotten more highly algorithm based and it would definitely appear the nearly uniform release of a couple or more business award seats at schedule opening may be a thing of the past. For what it's worth, Air Tahiti Nui, which is also another Amadeus customer just a few months ago did a similar change. I image Amadeus may be marketing enhance revenue management software upgrades to their customers.
In any event, since Qatar has a difficult time selling business class on a number of their routes it actually may help shake up Award availability on less popular routes but I think it's going to be harder to rely on those 2-4 business award seats that used to show up a year out on practically all flights. It was a good opportunity to snag difficult to find seats over the past few weeks.
The other interesting thing I have noticed is that QR used to release a fixed amount of U business class inventory at the time the schedule opens up and then once those seats were snagged there would rarely be any more released (but on the flip side if someone cancelled and returned the U inventory it often times would return even close to flight date - especially if R was still being sold). This was a bit unique (and rather simple) to QR in that they almost sectioned off a handful of business award seats where as most modern revenue management systems are based on demand and previous year sales statistics for similar dates. Now it seems their process to release award seats may have gotten more highly algorithm based and it would definitely appear the nearly uniform release of a couple or more business award seats at schedule opening may be a thing of the past. For what it's worth, Air Tahiti Nui, which is also another Amadeus customer just a few months ago did a similar change. I image Amadeus may be marketing enhance revenue management software upgrades to their customers.
In any event, since Qatar has a difficult time selling business class on a number of their routes it actually may help shake up Award availability on less popular routes but I think it's going to be harder to rely on those 2-4 business award seats that used to show up a year out on practically all flights. It was a good opportunity to snag difficult to find seats over the past few weeks.
Apr 12, 2019, 3:39 pm
#761
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Austin
Posts: 4,629
Apr 13, 2019, 9:05 am
#762
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: SEA
Programs: Alaska MVP Gold
Posts: 539
The sky is not falling. Just this morning I booked 2 tickets in Q Suites JFK-DOH-CMB for March 2020. Knowing the AA website is showing phantom availability, I first confirmed space on BA and then called AA to book. You might just need to plan ahead.
Apr 13, 2019, 9:33 am
#763
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 4,531
Just be aware CMBDOH gets somewhat frequent equipment swaps. We’ve already been downgraded from Q to a LATAM 350 that QR has on lease. Thankfully the longer segment will be in Q.
Also note that Q four packs can’t be select online if the party is in separate PNRs. You have to ring.
Lastly, J pax can upgrade to the F lounge in DOH for something like $70 per person.
Enjoy - Jamie
Apr 13, 2019, 10:12 am
#764
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 150
A few more weeks until the dates I need open up, fingers crossed!
Apr 14, 2019, 12:33 pm
#765
Join Date: Jun 2016
Posts: 15
I was able to book HEL-ARN-DOH-MLE (November) CMB-DOH-OSL-HEL (December) for two with 170.000 miles, all segments in business, three with Qsuites, at least now. I found space with AA-award search tool and put it on hold for 5 days. I couldn't pay it online and had to call to AA call center and first they said that they can't make my routing with same miles.... luckily the supervisor step in and was able to book it.
Now I got pnr code and was able to choose seats for Finnair flights, Hel-Arn Osl-Hel. Then I started to choose seats for Qr-flights, I can choose them but it won't let me save my seat preferences.... maybe I have to call Qatar...
Now I got pnr code and was able to choose seats for Finnair flights, Hel-Arn Osl-Hel. Then I started to choose seats for Qr-flights, I can choose them but it won't let me save my seat preferences.... maybe I have to call Qatar...
