dilvala

I wish I had known how hard it was to find regular award seat before crediting the miles to PC. Every date is showing double the required points for DOH - ORD, is this normal?

Dr. HFH

Unfortunately, it seems to be. I'm in the same position. Sitting with a half-million QRPC miles and no place to spend them.

Traveller999

lost_in_translation

There was a period in December when there was a lot of QR reward availability, even out of LHR/SYD, but since then a lot of it seems to have been removed - there was a small release of a few seats about a week ago (as I managed to book a couple of flights using it), but very little else for all of Jan/Feb so far. Not clear if this is a policy change or QR are just being lazy in releasing availability...

Dev1l

You just need to play around your routes a little bit and of course availability in high traffic routes will be low.

Back in Oct 17, I tried searching for routes from KL to LHR or CDG in March 18 and most of them are 2x the miles but there are some flights that is 1x but none were on the QSuites. I played around other South East Asia countries and found that surprisingly there were plenty of 1x miles from BKK to CDG (but not LHR) and there were even 1x miles on the QSuites B777.

I happily redeemed Business on A380 from BKK to Doha and QSuites B777 from Doha to CDG for 75,000 miles and the return A380 Business from CDG to Doha and A380 First Class from Doha to BKK for also 75,000 miles. I realized if you pick your second leg in first class, it'll still show as 75,000 miles, thought it was a systems error but it proved true even after a few months.

Happy hunting

Crisu69

Correct. I have no problem with my upgrades up to now and flexibility is also the key

Below you can see an example dummy booking FRA-BKK an tere is a lot of upgrade or award availability in economy/business without Q2:

SullyofDoha

To be honest, I agree the number of x2 miles has become massively annoying, and also seems like false advertising by QR. If people knew how hard it was to use the rewards at the originally published redemption rates, they probably would forgo registering for QR’s Privilege Club.
btw, I am no rookie at redemption awards!

Crisu69

If you are interested in an econmy award i see, there is nearly every day award availability.

Even for business upgrade/award i found some availability after some search without Q2. Below you find 2 example for your routing

Dr. HFH

I don't think that it's that simple. Take DOH/BOS, a route I travel often and would love to have some redemptions for. Just looked at 743 for February 27, five days from now. EF shows J9 C9 D9 I9, but there's no award availability. Same with February 28th.

Let's look at the other direction. February 28, BOS-DOH, six days from now, QR 744. J9 C9 D9 I9 R9, and 15 J seats unassigned on the seat map. (Yes, I know that it's not a reliable way to gauge availability.) No availability.

salehir

Just to make it clear that award availability will vary from person to person based on their respective status with QR.Crisu69 seems to be a platinum member hence has a lot more award availability open whereas members who do not have a higher status will unfortunately not see much standard availability.

That is how I seem to gauge the PC programme so far which is quite a shame.

Dev1l

Good point, for gold and platinum members, it does state in the website that there are better availability for award seat redemptions

Traveller999

Dr. HFH

Just for reference, I'm what I refer to as a higher value PLT, -- that is, I qualify for two years at a time based on the number of QPoints I accumulate during each year. That should help, at least in theory; but I see no evidence of that.

I already have a half dozen roundtrips booked on QR for 2018 between SEAsia and the U.S. The ones that were booked during the sale, and thus earning double miles, I'll leave with QRPC. All others I'm now crediting to AAdvantage. I can use those miles for CX F redemptions between the U.S. and SEAsia. On the surface seems counter-intuitive, but it's much easier to get CX F seats between BOS/JFK/ORD and HKG than it is to get QR J seats, especially between DOH and BKK in either direction. (And, yes, I've tried the other Thailand destinations, USM, UTP, CNX; and availability is no better.) Also tried HAN, same result.

Overall, I think that AAB does a great job, and has created a great airline. However, in this particular aspect, it just doesn't make it.

lifeonthego_k

I've booked quite a few QR awards in J/F in the past and over the last 1-1.5 years it's become progressively harder to find availability at business saver level. For a SIN-NYC return trip in Jun '17 I had to book the award in Oct '16, for a return trip from SIN to Europe in J/F (2 pax) I booked in Feb '17 for September '17 and for another upcoming SIN-NYC trip in Jun '18 I had to book in Nov '17. In my experience booking 365/333 days out doesn't help - QR doesn't seem to follow the trend of opening up award space as soon as revenue tickets become available. In Nov '17 to be honest they did have quite a dates with availability in J (Qsuites) from SIN-JFK return but on Dec 1 it all disappeared. While award availability has reduced, the number of Qmiles and Qpoints promos QR has been running has been increasing. I rather have fewer miles and be able to use them than get a ton of Qmiles and search for hours trying to find availability that may not even be there.

Cheetah_SA

It seems the severe drought in CPT extends to award seats on QR - scarce as hen's teeth on an inbound and totally impossible to find them for an outbound.

I have miles expiring soon and can't find any awards even at distant dates.