Best use for expiring QMiles
 

Hello, have all my QMiles expiring in June and am wondering if the collective hive mind of FT can advise of a business class redemption available for booking for somewhere (other than just Doha) from UK or anywhere in the EU at the moment for anytime this year for just shy of 140K QMiles ?

Thanks in advance :-)

If not, anyone have any good options for using the points ? Could always convert 100K into All Accor points I think.

I converted mine to Accor; it was too much hassle to have to look for availability, look for pricing, then to submit online form to book, etc etc. Made worse by the fact that the redemption rates are very expensive to begin with.

Redemption on partners are cheaper.

there are some easy deals with 50% off on business these days (including some ex-EU), if you are good to travel by end March

if the available destinations don’t suit your fancy (or the availability is not good) wait for the next round of easy deals

If you are just looking to get rid of your miles and be done with QRPC I would suggest this isn't the best strategy as there could always be a devaluation by then (I see double Qmiles are available yet again for bookings currently).

If you are really flexible and planning to visit East Asia, I would suggest a different approach. You can use these Qmiles on multiple one way business/economy class redemptions with partner airlines (Cathay, Japan Airlines) between Japanese cities and Taiwan or Hong Kong. During Golden Week last year, I remember seeing one way flight between Japan and Taipei/ HKG going for a minimum of $700. Compare this with Tokyo-Taipei which I had booked for 20K Qmiles in Economy (Business was 40K)

I highly suggest you look into easydeals, I booked quite a few under the current promo and made them quite reasonable value!

As QR's partner award chart is based on miles flown you can create some interesting itineraries - FRA-HKG-FRA flying CX J will cost you 170k Qmiles (vs. 251k Qmiles on QR metal). If you can transfer in 30k miles from a credit card, this will be a good use.

As many have commented before - use them with Easydeals where you can effectively have double Qmiles (279,418) to use , assuming you get 50% on all you redemptions

SF

Anyone know when the next lot of easy deal destinations will be released ? As of today still says "Book by Jan 31st" :-(

https://www.qatarairways.com/en/Priv...Easydeals.html

Need to use up my Qatar points.

Just had an email the other day - current batch is book by 29th Feb, travel until 30th April.

Thanks railways, I must be losing my mind !

Best use for 81k expiring QMiles
 

I have ~81k QMiles that are expiring on June 30.
I don’t usually credit flights to QRPC, so I’m not familiar with the program. The miles have been sitting in the account since a 5x QMiles offer a couple years ago and all I know is that there was a massive devaluation in 2018 or so.
Are there any sweet spots left? Is there a way to keep the miles from expiring, except paying a ridiculous amount of money?
Thanks in advance!

QR used to run their EasyDeals (https://www.qatarairways.com/en/Priv...Easydeals.html) where the required miles were roughly on par what you paid pre-devaluation. However currently there are none (page tells to book by end/January). You can check in the qcalculator the number of miles required for award travel or upgrade for any route but i'm not sure if these days there are routes where the required miles are 1x (ie. the number shown in qcalculator) rather than 2x (twice that) if there is availability at all. Apart from that you can see if you can agree a trade in the coupon connection thread.

As for miles not expiring that's only possible for Platinum members as far as i know.

Thank you! The problem with the EasyDeals that I see is you can only book a short time out, right? So even if they made new deals available, it would probably be for travel in August/September or so? I doubt there will be many one would be able to travel to.
Are there any OK redemptions left with partner airlines?

You can use them to buy a ticket with the Qmiles+cash option or transfer them to Accor points if you don’t have any other use of your Qmiles before they expire...

Transferring to Accor is a terrible idea.

Only good option you have is to book a flight well into the future.

Yes, booking well into the future is what I want to do. But Cash&miles is probably pretty bad value, too.
Thus my question: What would be better value?

Are you located in the UK , maybe useful to spend the miles on tickets with British Airways.

Well, book something with qmiles?

LOL. Obviously. Thus my question, what can you still get for 81k when there are no EasyDeals? I think for ~70k you used to be able to fly from Europe to Australia in business class, but I understand those times are over and not coming back.

It's usually a better deal to book with a OW partner than with QR themselves

That’s what I thought, too (post devaluation).
But no suggestions for what you can still get for 81k?

Check,the qq calculator on the privelege website

example 75.000 qmiles gets you a economy return ticket on British Airways. LHR to New York JFK

https://www.qatarairways.com/en-gb/P...alculator.html

LOL, what a bargain. Are you aware that ~70k used to get you from Europe to Australia in business class?

I was hoping someone might have some insight into which routes might still be a good value. I'm not too keen to just plug in dozens of random routes into the QCalculator...

It might be difficult to guess what is good value for you, cause it depends on many factors: where you are based, where you need to be, how often you need to travel in other regions.
From the top of my head:
Europe to US in J on AA should be 70K Qmiles one-way
Japan to HKG on Cathay is 75K in F one-way
Intra-Europe should be 15K in Y one-way on most partners

Most of my longhaul travel is for leisure and I am flexible. I have lots of miles in other programs as well. I just want to get a good deal. Back in the days, my plan was to burn the miles on a flight from Europe to Australia (or vice versa).

Finally some suggestions! Thank you so much. That's actually not too bad.

That's quite expensive. Should be significantly cheaper through CX or BA.

That's quite ok, too. If only IAG didn't sell Avios so cheap all the time...

Keep in mind that PC's partner awards are actually distance-based, even though QR took down the charts. So you are very likely to find the best value in the very short flights or in the very long ones, the latter most probably not suitablebfor you given you only have 81K qmiles.
To me the most interesting part is the ability redeem for S7 flights in Russia east of Urals, something non-available to me via AAdvantage or due to my hatred of surcharges pushed down your throat by BA.

The problem is there aren't really any sweet spots left which are usable by the majority of people.
As you say Qatar devalued their QMiles so much it became a disincentive to collect their miles.

If this Chinese bioweapon hadn't hit everywhere I'd be happy to use mine on an Easy Deal but the travel period, as you say, is too short. They should extend the travel period to later in the year/early 2021 to encourage bookings.

I was able to enjoy numerous redemption trips in the early days of QMiles in J and F all over the place, it was fantastic and not really sustainable but they went too far and gutted the programme completely :-(
I've also used QMiles for BA J to Cairo since the devaluation and a QR return J LHR-BKK for my father (huge amount of points !) also transferred some to Accor (which is better than losing them !) .

I have about 100K expiring sometime in July.
If I can't find a redemption I want I will bang them into Accor again. Shame but better than losing them.
Problem is I have a nasty chronic back & neck problem which causes me very serious pain, travelling long distances in economy is just an absolute no-no, I'd be crying and ruined for a week. Finding J redemption for reasonable numbers of QMiles (and the numbers you & I have) requires 40/50% off the now standard exorbitant number of QMiles so unless QR run a large 50% off promo we're stuck with the short travel periods of Easy Deals.

It would be nice to see QR extent our QMiles for free during this pandemic, but then other than in the sky they are a pretty poor company when it comes to customer service :-(

I used to be Platinum and not worry about expiring miles as I used them all the time but also a Plat perk is no expiry date. They should extend that to all members at the moment really.

If you find any sweet spots please let us know.
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Good luck and I hope a few more suggestions come in for you. I used to know the programme & route costs really well but after they decimated the award table I lost interest, it encouraged me to look outside Qatar Airways - which is the opposite of what a loyalty programme should do !!

I have seen some good deals with EasyJet over the years, though they may have moved to more dynamic pricing now.
That's certainly an option you could look at if they still partner with EasyJet. You used to be able to check route pricing (in QMiles) and book on the Qatar website somewhere. It was a specific section of their website dedicated to EasyJet.

Would be interesting to know what the taxes & fees are like on those compared to the £35/50 Avios RFS cost.

Thanks for your input!
Do they really partner with EasyJet? I only knew Emirates does that.
Anyway, it’s probably bad value.
On Twitter, QR asked me to call their QRPC team regarding the expiry. I just need to get off my butt and finally do it. But I’m not very optimistic.

Sh*t, you are right, I got confused with when I was flying Emirates a lot.
what have you done with the QMiles ?

Anyone know if new Easy Deals are available ?
and if so, where ?

Is your FT profile correct and you are still Platinum with QR? Then your miles should not expire (and you should have received a 12-month status extension during which they won't).

Is QR planning to extend the Qmiles expiry date?
 

A new round of Qmiles expires on 30th June. Has QR announced any plan to extend the date given that we are in the middle of a pandemic or I will have to watch my 80,000 Qmiles become worthless. Has anyone of you heard anything?

Someone asked this a while ago as there are several of us with the same problem. IIRC the answer was, unlike tier status, there were no plans to extend expiring Qmiles.

That's why I booked an awards flight PDQ.

Edit: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qatar-airways-privilege-club/2014998-warning-alert-privilege-club-members-loss-qmiles.html

Convert them into Accor points. It’s better than loosing them...

This is really a sad way of using them lol.