SecretFlying points to a roundtrip fare on Qatar Airways between Atlanta and Tehran for as little as $536.
Fare basis is OLUSP4NX:
- Travel outbound Sunday through Wednesday
- Return travel must commence on Monday through Thursday
- Fare is valid for travel commencing (first international flight) November 1 through 20, and January 11 through March 31.
- Your return must be at least 7 days from departure, and not more than four months from departure.
- You can have one free stopover in Doha not to exceed 7 days (an addition stopover in the other direction is $100)
- Tickets must be issued today, May 22
- There’s a $500 cancellation fee to refund, and $200 change fee
My first search pulled up $579 fares.
Flights between Atlanta and Tehran offer really efficent connections in Doha.
The base fare on this itinerary is just $35.50 each way, the rest is all fuel surcharges and taxes.
Interestingly, a roundtrip is at least $100 cheaper than a one-way to Iran. And it’s about half the price of a one-way to Doha. Iran visa aside there are interesting ‘throwaway’ opportunities here for someone wanting to travel just to the Mideast.
The Doha – Atlanta flight is the one that Qatar CEO Akbar al-Baker said they launched for spite (Delta’s then CEO last year cast blame on Qatar for 9/11 to advance his own protectionist agenda.)
It’s the flight that also prompted Delta to ax support for an Atlanta cultural institution after 20 years since Qatar rented the space for a J.Lo concert to celebrate the service.
Stock photo copyright: f11photo
Note finally that this fare earns only 25% of flown miles if credited to American AAdvantage.
Might be missing something, but not seeing any throwaway opportunities beyond Doha. Surely if you throw away Doha-Tehran, there goes your entire return ticket? And no icing on the cake with just 25% miles credited.
Only way a US passport holder (with no other passport) can get this as a throwaway is if they get a visa for Iran. Certainly not a simple way to get a cheaper ticket to Doha than just buying one, and probably not cheaper at all in the end of paying for the fees associated with getting a visa.
The title is disingenuously deceptive with a price that is fake.
We would appreciate more integrity.
What Secret Flyer has alerted me to is how ridiculously cheap RT fares are out of Europe to places, including the US. Since we have the miles to get to Europe we need more emphasis in the blogs on how to connect for these super low European fares. For example stretching fares out return for cheap returns to Europe.
Sheesh…
A misleading title for a post that, as the commenters above have noted, is virtually useless to nearly everyone who reads it. 🙁
Especially love the part about tickets needing to be issued TODAY. So that when one finds getting a passport to Iran to be overly difficult, one can cancel the “$35 fare” with ‘only’ a $500 cancelation penalty.
Just before reading this I posted a critical comment on the Chase FB post, thinking nothing could be worse than that. But I was so wrong. I wonder if there is a 12 step program for long term reader of this blog who just can’t seem to stop themselves from continuing to read it? 😉
@Sam U – the snippet that goes out with the RSS feed and emails and is on the front page of the blog gave the full scoop, so not hiding the ball on it at least, it’s right there.
Sam and Robert, I would assume that Gary’s favorite 3x-fuel dump works on this one.
Now, will US-based OTAs be able to ticket it with the sanctions still in effect? Last time I looked it was tough to book tickets to IKA or HAV. It can be done, just not easily.