Qatar Airways has started charging for business class seat assignments on award tickets. Anything booked into “U” class, which is business class awards and Avios upgrades, now requires paid seats if you want to choose which seat you’ll have, unless you have eligible Qatar or oneworld elite status.
- This started November 3
- Free seat assignments are available for oneworld Sapphire and Emerald members (e.g. American AAdvantage Platinum and higher)
- And are available free at check-in, 48 hours in advance or 24 hours for U.S. flights.
Seat fees show up on the seat map during selection, even where the booking path still shows “seat selection included.” Seat prices are per flight and per passenger, and vary based on length of flight. Qatar hasn’t published a terms and conditions update on this, though.
There are some reports of pre-November 3 bookings retaining their seats while some people have reported their seat assignments disappearing and then having to pay for seat selection. That suggests a roll-out quirk to me, and I’d push back asking Qatar to honor the rules at time of booking, and seats that had already been assigned. (Similarly, there are a few reports where some routes didn’t show fees, consistent with teething issues on the policy.)
It doesn’t appear that this applies to first class awards. Qatar treats short-haul premium cabin as first class, and their Airbus A380 features a first class cabin. First class awards book into Z, not U.
If you have oneworld status and it’s in the booking, that should get you out of the fees. If you don’t have status and don’t want to pay, check in as soon as the online check-in window opens to grab the best seats left at that time. Otherwise, budget the fee per segment. And monitor existing bookings to make sure you don’t lose existing assigned seats.
Qatar Airways began offering a “basic” or un-bundled business class fare in November 2020, when it began excluding lounge access and advance seat selection. Then they revised their fare families in fall 2021, reinstating lounge access to R-class and introducing “Business Lite” P-class.
Of course, Qatar is hardly the first to do this. Emirates and Finnair sell basic business class tickets. And British Airways actually began charging for business class seat assignments (for those not on full fare tickets or with eligible status) way back in 2009. This policy extends to award tickets. Qatar Airways owns 25% of British Airways parent IAG.
(HT: Travel-Dealz)
Gary… I’m Platinum with AA. How does Qatar know that when I go to book seats? I’ve always wondered how that works?
How do the prices range?
@Patrick — Use your AA frequent flyer details for the Qatar booking, then you should be able to select seats without charge; sometimes you have to call. Good luck. Hopefully you get Q-suite.
If you book with Avios via your Qatar account, you need to call to give them your AAdvantage # so they can see the status.