Philippine Airlines Awards Business Class Awards To Asia Now Easy To Book Thanks To New Qatar Partnership

Qatar Airways Privilege Club now partners with Philippine Airlines for mileage-earning and redemption. You can use Qatar’s points for Philippine Airlines flights online.

• It’s easy to get Qatar Airways points. Many credit card programs transfer directly. For those that don’t, move the points to British Airways and from BA to Qatar.

• I’ve been writing for over a decade about how good award availability is on Philippine Airlines. There have been only a few decent ways to book the seats which has meant almost no competition. That’s likely to change.

• Pricing isn’t cheap, but it’s a new good way to get all over Asia with your points.

Qatar does not publish a Philippine Airlines award chart. Points prices are distance-based. LA – Manila will run 110,000 points each way in business class. Manila – New York JFK will cost 154,500 points. But taxes and fees are a very reasonable ~ $200. And they fly:

• Los Angeles 2x daily
  
• San Francisco 1x daily
  
• Honolulu 5x weekly
  
• New York JFK 3x weekly
  
• Seattle 5x weekly
  
• Chicago 3x weekly starting November 9

The new A350-1000 is the aircraft to want, with 42 business class suites with doors. The A350-900 is fine. There are multiple configurations of the 777-300ERs including with angled seats. But the point here is that availability can be great, and there aren’t other current viable ways of getting these seats besides the new Qatar partnership.

U.S. frequent flyers don’t generally have access to large quanities of Philippine Airlines Mabuhay Miles. ANA (Amex transfer partner) used to allow redemptions by phone, but these were generally suspended. An Alaska Airlines partnership has been announced but isn’t live yet – and should offer better pricing.

American Airlines has a partnership that doesn’t include redemption. If they’re partnering with Qatar and Alaska, though, I have to expect something with American at some point or eventual oneworld membership. But this has seemed like it could happen for the last seven years.

You can transfer points to Qatar Airways from: American Express Membership Rewards; Bilt Rewards; Capital One; Citi ThankYou Rewards.

And you can transfer to British Airways Avios and then on to Qatar from: Chase Ultimate Rewards, Wells Fargo Rewards, and Diners Club Rewards.

Both BA and Qatar accounts have to be linked, the account-linking feature is only available 30 days after account creation, the first name, last name, date of birth, and email must match. BA household account members over 18 can link to Qatar but can move only their own individual Avios balance. If the BA email address was changed, Avios transfers are paused for seven days.