Jonesy321

Today I have tried to book a business class award ticket from Doh to a European destination, however there are no business class tickets on any routes (though there were tickets available a few days ago), and when I search alternative dates for next year, in low season, there aren’t any available at all. Has anyone else noticed this and if you have, do you know why?

Animgif

I've been monitoring a few routes and noticed the same thing. A complete pull of all awards (even on routes where they were plentiful before).

lost_in_translation

I believe it was all removed a couple of days ago at the same time as lower cash fare buckets to stop people using it to take advantage of the free rebooking policy QR recently implemented, see thread here - Covid-19: Book with Confidence QR Policy

TBC to what extent this availability comes back, I think QR probably just haven't got around to reinstating any of the reward availability yet.

Jonesy321

Looked again today and there seem to be a number of economy tickets available but no business class to be had on any routes, or any dates, it seems. I am just wondering what the rationale behind this is and hoping that some of these award tickets become available soon.

maestro1981

Bump.

Searching SYD-FCO a few days ago, most dates were available for redemption during July, August, September and October this year. The next day, every single date showed zero.

Any further info on this?

MrAnonymous

Plenty of Business award availability on DFW-DOH-South Africa in the first few months of 2021.

We’ll be booking this flight next March/April for late February of 2022.

irishguy28

Australia has imposed a cap on the numbers of arriving passengers allowed into the country, which will be in place "for the foreseeable future".

SYD will only receive 450 incoming passengers per day from overseas, with no more than 50 passengers on any single flight.

With MEL currently receiving no passengers at all, spaces on flights into SYD will command a princely sum for the foreseeable future. Far too valuable to be "wasted" on award redemptions, I would wager...

https://www.executivetraveller.com/n...-4000-per-week

Top of climb

Not sure how this affects availability ex-SYD.

maestro1981

Dear irishguy28,

Thanks for your input. As Top of climb mentioned above, I'm talking about ex-SYD, where there are no caps on passenger numbers, QR departures are daily and commercial availability seems high.

irishguy28

Then by all means call QR and ask them to release an award ticket for you.

When a destination gets "switched off" for redemptions, then it will affect both originating and arriving passengers. The majority of QR's customers will seek to make return bookings, so originating from SYD means that, for most, they run into the problem when looking to come back.

maestro1981

Dear irishguy28,

Thank you most kindly for your explanation and suggestion. Very much appreciated. I was wanting to buy an economy fare and upgrade, before I encountered the entire month disappearing situation.

As your kindly recommended, I called the platinum line (twice) and spoke to two different people but was given the exact same word-for-word generic reply "subject to availability, etc." as if they were reading from a screen. I tried to kindly explain the unusual circumstances in the hope they would at least put me on hold and investigate with their supervisor, but no haha. I must admit, I'm not used to that unwillingness to investigate from the other airlines I'm with at platinum level. So I just thanked them kindly for their time and will have to book with a competitor. No big deal, just wanted to give QR my business, but not meant to be ))

Sisyphus1carus

I will be following this closely. This is a worrying situation for anyone with QPoints to use before they are savagely devalued or expire.

Sisyphus1carus

This is Qatar customer service all over.
They are excellent in the air but anything like this they are utterly abysmal. It really needs a huge shake up.

maestro1981

Hi all, thought I should give a final update on my posts above.

In short:
- every day in June, there were Business redemptions for available for SYD-FCO almost every day in July.
- on 1 July, the entire month of redemptions were removed (as were the entire months of redemptions in August & September).

Today, I noticed that almost every remaining day in July had redemptions available again and they had all be re-instated. I immediately called the Qatar Platinum member line who confirmed that as correct. I asked why and they said that someone must have cancelled their award tickets (more than 4 every day for several months instantly? haha). While they were on the phone, I booked an Economy (V) ticket and went to upgrade. Then, online, it stated that no upgrade seats were available. I confirmed on the phone once again immediately that they were indeed still available. I asked them to manually upgrade because their website is obviously buggy. I was told it would be done within a few minutes. After three hours, I didn't hear back so I called again. They said no manual upgrade was done and now they weren't available because some else had taken them (hmmm). Yet, they still appeared online to redeem for a new booking. I asked to please speak to a supervisor and was denied. So, I wrote a complaint stating all the facts clearly. Today, I see my seats have been upgraded, of course with no reply or explanation lol.

I'm very happy with the outcome but extremely frustrated that I had to fight for it. I love Qatar, but I am frustrated that I never seem to have these sort of problems with their competitors and admittedly, it's sadly beginning to question my future loyalty ((