Qatar has one of the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’. These are revolutionary suites with doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space. Right now there’s fantastic award availability booking for August through November 2022 for Qatar’s QSuites product – out of several U.S. cities – with four business class seats available.
This space was first flagged by Spencer Howard who runs an award availability email newsletter. He sent out an alert flagging award availability for up to four people in business class to Doha for flights from:
- Boston
- Dallas – Fort Worth
- Houston Intercontinental
- Los Angeles
- Chicago O’Hare
- Philadelphia
- Seattle
- San Francisco
- and Montreal
For instance here’s availability for two passengers San Francisco – Doha in October:
And Chicago – Doha in October:
In the past it’s been possible but not easy to get (4) business class award seats on a single flight with QSuites. Generally Qatar availability goes in waves, it comes and goes, and is usually best towards the end of the booking window. It’s searchable with a calendar at AA.com. Four seats are special to be seated in a section of four, take down dividers.
Credit: Qatar Airways
Credit: Qatar Airways
This is a fantastic chance to redeem miles for one of the world’s best business classes. You may want to visit Doha, I recommend a couple of days and definitely seeing the Museum of Islamic Art. However it’s also a great connecting point for India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and elsewhere.
Qatar Airways Privilege Club is a Citi ThankYou transfer partner. New York JFK – Doha is 70,000 miles and New York – Doha – Maldives is 85,000 miles in business class each way. There are no fuel surcharges.
American AAdvantage charges 70,000 miles each way in business class for U.S. to Mideast or Indian Subcontinent which includes the Maldives. American also lets you connect in Doha to Africa on Qatar on a single award redemption for 75,000 miles each way.
British Airways (Chase, American Express transfer partner) can book Qatar Airways seats with fuel surcharges. Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles (American Express, Citi transfer partner) can as well. Alaska shows both saver availability at reasonable prices, and availability when no saver is open at exorbitant prices.
I love that they are keep making the availability (4+) great especially now they fly out of my home port SEA. I once took my family on a Qsuite back in 2018 between DOH-JFK before they launched SEA route and it was amazing not to mention the huge business class lounge at DOH. Earlier this year I booked another trip for this winter and we will be on Qsuite twice, Phuket to DOH to SEA. God hope delta variant doesn’t ruin this.
@ Gary — Recently, you’ve also recently been able to buy QSuites on many US routes for <$2,500, which is an even better deal if you are looking for AS (or AA status). For example, we recently booked SFO-DOH-ATH r/t for $1,830, and the ticket will earn 69.5k AS RDMs and 24.8k AS EQMs. I will take that over 140k roundtrip any day.
Alaska had promised redemptions on Qatar will open up “in summer”. Still waiting.
@Gene – We are newly status-matched AS MVP75Ks, and have booked two of these trips. I can’t get the RDM calculation to be nearly as generous as your figures. What are the multipliers you are using? What am I doing wrong?
@ Jennifer – 9,926 flown each way x 2 x 350% (100% base + 125% class bonus + 125% elite bonus for 75ks) = 69,482. EQMs = 9,926 x 2x 125% =24,815. You can also prorate the 50,000 RDM bonus for reaching 75,000 EQMs, giving you another 16,543 RDM for a total 86,025 RDMs. Hope that helps.
@ Gary
was that on sale? I am showing $2319 as lowest fare for that route right now on any dates I checked. Wasn’t Alaska also running special fare on Qatar recently?
Under $1900 is cheap if I can book it through Chase portal using chase point at 1.5c. I am miles/points rich but cash poor. I have over 9 million miles and points across the board all combined but no way I can afford to spend over $2000 even for my entire family of 4 on an airfare.
@tjp74 — Yes, that was after the $550 Alaska discount, which expired 5 days ago.
@Gene – Thanks for the step-by-step. I was failing to add the 2.25x to the 1.25x for the elite bonus for RDM.
What’s the best way to search for the QSuites award space?
What’s the best way to search this Qsuite award availability with this calendar view as in the post? Sorry for noob question. I’m checking AA and BA but it’s so cumbersome. TIA
@Martin – these are screenshots from aa.com
Just checked on AA for Qatar, JFK to NBO, June 2022, and the surcharge is over 2K for RT. Confused – thought the surcharge was super low. (I did this route a couple years ago for 140K miles plus $63.)
I’m seeing no Qatar flights when searching on AA, only RJ. Is anyone else having luck?
Any high value bonvoy properties in their route map? Already been to Maldives.
“I’m seeing no Qatar flights when searching on AA, only RJ. Is anyone else having luck?”
Same here.
I was looking at DFW-DOH and AA.com is showing over $4k in taxes in J. Is that always the case?!
Jeff you must be seeing British Airways flights, that’s the only carrier on AA that has those type of surcharges. Qatar will be about $100 a ticket.
There is something screwy with Gary’s post, the comments are all from this past summer yet the post date is Dec 23rd.
None of this is accurate and it’s posted across multiple websites. Whoever did the initial search failed to filter by non-stop flights so they assumed all 70k fairs were Qatar but in fact they are 1 stop RJ flights. Surprised no other travel gurus caught that
@Joe – false. This was available at the time it was posted but you have to grab space quickly when it’s open