A place to list good economy fares which require fewer QMiles to upgrade
 

Hi,

Has anyone spotted any great QR economy fares which fall into the B,H,Y booking classes (which require the fewest number of QMiles for upgrade to business class) ?


Any in the V,L,K,M booking classes (which require about 50% more than the above but still not the obscene amount needed to upgrade O,T,N,Q,S fare classes) ?

Just thought it'd be nice to have somewhere to tell other people about anything we find.
I haven't found any !!!! I just started looking for some yesterday and though this was something missing from FT.


https://www.qatarairways.com/en-gb/Privilege-Club/qcalculator.html

I can not recall if W fares are upgrade-able in reality. They do not appear in the list of fare classes in the QCalculator for upgrades.

Also the info in the below link may be relevant, however O & T are upgrade-able so take with a pinch of salt.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qatar-airways-privilege-club/1815898-o-class-economy-fares-upgradeable.html

The ITA Matrix code to search for the booking class of B, H or Y is 'f bc = Y B H'
This produces the economy fares which cost the least in QMiles to upgrade to business class.

The ITA Matrix code to search for the booking class of V,L,K,M is 'f bc = V L K M'
This produces the economy fares which are in the middle ground of costs in terms of QMiles to upgrade to business class.

The ITA Matrix code to search for the booking class of O,T,N,Q,S is 'f bc = O T N Q S'
This produces the economy fares which cost the most in QMiles to upgrade to business class. Now a ludicrous number of QMiles since the devaluation which occurred without warning !

** NOTE - This forum does not seem to display the pipe character and instead substitutes a space. In between each booking class should be the pipe character (a vertical line).

So in the interest of starting this off, here's a random fare !! Obviously I wouldn't usually structure a 'fare alert' like this but this is just an example of how things differ.

I spotted a fare of something in the region of £345 for LGW - Danang on Qatar and I wondered to myself whether I could upgrade that using QMiles which I am looking to get rid of. Unfortunately it turned out that was in a booking class which apparently can't be upgraded using QMiles. So I started wondering what the price difference would be before I could start using QMiles to upgrade (hence this whole thread !!).

I don't especially want to go to Danang or in the time-frame I've used in this example, it is just an exercise - although hopefully if people spot opportunities of great fares which can be upgraded they'll (you'll !! / I'll) post them here.


I did a Matrix search of the following:

LHR, LGW, CWL

to

Da Nang International, Viet Nam (DAD)

for 14-20 nights starting on April 1st.

using f bc = V L K M (again the spaces should be the pipe character)
Which is not in the best booking class for the amount of QMiles needed to upgrade but is also not in the worst, its in the middle set !!
I found a fare of £763 in V LGW-DAD-LHR. This would require 130,000 QMiles to upgrade return.

using f bc = O T N Q S (again the spaces should be the pipe character)
I found a fare of £587 in O LGW-DAD-LHR. This would require an eye watering 170,000 QMiles to upgrade return.

using f bc = B H Y (again the spaces should be the pipe character)
I found a fare of £1,484 in B LGW-DAD-LHR. This would require a pleasing 85,000 QMiles to upgrade return.
Clearly you'd have to be a nutter to pay that for an economy fare just so you could use the least amount of QMiles to upgrade to business class - although on this itinerary you would save yourself a whopping 85,000 QMiles on the upgrade cost !!

Then there was of course the economy fare of ~ £345 which I spotted that could not be upgraded using QMiles.


So.......maybe I've just drunk too much coffee today and gone off on one or perhaps this thread could become of some use.






From the QCalculator...upgrade costs for a return (QMiles) CWL / LHR - DADClass

Economy to Business (V,L,K,M)
130,000
Economy to Business (B,H,Y)
85,000
Economy to Business (O,T,N,Q,S)
170,000

Don't forget the almost non-existing online upgrade availability. If you can't find one, then you'll end up requesting for upgrade sector-by-sector at airports and that will cost you more qmiles.

Cheers Matt, this is the sort of thing that would be great for us all to post in here when we find good upgradeable fares like this (or fares which are only a bit more expensive than the non-upgradeable version at that moment in time).


Looking at your example of ARN-PEN in H (I don't know the dates you were using) I can see that the cheapest business class offering is 1,713 EUR vs 830 EUR (in April I searched, is a B fare) so the difference is ~900 EUR cash to buy a biz fare vs this H/B fare with an upgrade of 85,000 QMiles. Nice
This is vs the disgraceful cost of 251,000 QMiles for a ticket in biz.

Fantastic :-)

This is the sort of thing I'd love to get this thread populated with so we can all start enjoying well worked out upgrades as I'm sure we're all cheesed off looking at the outright cost in QMiles of straight business class tickets since the 'enhancements' :-)

I just upgraded IST-DOH-MLE . Upgrading separately was 50000 QMiles together was 47500 . Only 2500 difference but still less .

As it happened initially I couldnt upgrade both sectors so I upgraded the first sector IST-DOH . Then,a day later, I could see the DOH-MLE sector showed as available but the online page wouldn't let me upgrade as it was picking up the first sector as business and trying to upgrade the second sector to first (there is no first on the flight ) .

I emailed QR and the first reply was you cant upgrade but keep trying . I didnt accept this and asked for an escalation .

Now heres the amazing thing . A QR agent actually rang ME !!!! to tell me they recognised the fault and had upgraded the second sector but to save me the 2500 QMiles . They cancelled the first upgrade sector and booked the 2 sectors together . So there is still some customer service if you dont accept the first reply and hang on in there........ YMMV (sorry if its a little off topic )

SOF-CMB £680 in V class (upgrade costs 75,000 to biz, 150,000 to first)

Outright business class costs 165,000 QMiles + ~£200 tax

(extra info, in B class is ~£1,350 + 50k QMiles)
(extra info, in N class is £560 + 95k QMiles)


Oh, and I easily found award availability on this route (well, there was on the few days I checked !!)

[QUOTE=crombiestone;30711571
I emailed QR and the first reply was you cant upgrade but keep trying . I didnt accept this and asked for an escalation .

Now heres the amazing thing . A QR agent actually rang ME !!!! [/QUOTE]


Wow ! You are either the luckiest man on the planet or Qatar are beginning to pick their customer service game up.

What was the email address you used ?
Cheers.

Initial request was to [email protected] the escalated was to [email protected]

Thanks. Those are the ones I've used in the past but stopped getting any meaningful help from a while back and absolutely no response in more recent history !

I like the initiative in this tread and the Arn-Pen price in flexi is excellent. I have however never(before this one) seen any flexifares worth paying for contra the price in valuefamily and qmiles deduction for upgrades.
As QRPC is formated today i highly doubt i will ever spend miles on a QR operated redemption ticket.
Another (can be....) wise move is spending our qmiles on parters. In my case it is a Thai domestic route where a return cost 240€ (10 500 Baht) and can be redeemed for 15 000 Qmiles and taxes.
Sorry for abit offtopic and i will post attractive fares in flexifamily if any finds in the future.

Cheers

Thanks for the comments Mate, much appreciated.
I admit I swore off using QMiles on Qatar when they dumped the 'enhancements' on us. I converted loads into Le Club Accor and have taken a couple of 100k BA biz flights too. Still got about 400k to burn though. The problem is that BA's CW is pants compared to QR's ;-)
I could look at Thai as visit at least once a year but have no knowledge of their programme etc...