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 the start of 2021 for Qatar’s QSuites product – out of several U.S. cities – with four business class seats available.
You’ll find good availability July onward, with July and August especially strong for four award seats (it’s sure hot in Doha that time of year). What I’m most focused on is booking for Winter 2022, however – far enough into the future that there’s a really good chance that countries will be open wherever you wish to go (even if there’s a seasonal element driving Covid-19).
In February 2021 you’ll find four business class award seats between the U.S. and Doha on a majority of days across all of their U.S. routes with the exception of Miami where there are only a handful of days with availability.
Boston – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
New York JFK – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
Atlanta – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
Chicago O’Hare – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
Dallas – Fort Worth – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
Houston – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
San Francisco – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
Los Angeles – Doha, availability for 4 business class award seats:
In the past it’s been possible but not easy to get (4) business class award seats on a single flight with QSuites. That’s special because it means you can be seated together 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.
It is not yet possible to redeem Alaska Airlines miles for travel on Qatar even though they’re now partners and fellow members of oneworld.
Ungracious for AA to maintain the rule that you can’t route to Asia via Middle East on a single reward, given that their partners’ (CX/JL) hubs in Asia aren’t open to Americans without quarantine, and transits have been left incredibly difficult and risky, to the extent their allowed at all (CS/MH).
I’ve already got my Q-suites trip booked to the Maldives in January 2022! 3 passengers in Q-quite bliss on the 350 round trip – 40+ hours!
The availability of QSuites pushed me to booking a trip to Tanzania (JRO) for Feb next year. Not the most ideal time but still plenty of pluses (calving season and whale sharks). My return flight is direct to SFO from DOH but didn’t have much luck with my flight there in early Feb. Just checked again and no luck (guessing it’s the connection to JRO). Not a big deal since it’s small layover in SEA.
Feels really good to be excited about traveling again. Have a trip to French Polynesia planned for late Aug. Had to tell my SO that there is a gag order on “what ifs”. Meaning we don’t talk about all the things that could go wrong that we cant change or plan for (e.g. what if they don’t open up because vaccine is ineffective against variants). I told them we’ll deal with whatever comes up but I just need something to look forward to.
Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but yes I can find BOS-DOH for 70,000 miles and separately I can find flights from DOH-BKK for 40,000 miles. So I could make my own itinerary to Asia for 110,000 miles booking two flights separately but no Qatar flights come up when searching BOS-BKK on any day.
DO you think if I called AA with the flight numbers they could book the two flights on one itinerary for 75,000 miles?
@SeanNY2 I may be wrong, but I don’t think AA allows you to route to Asia via Doha. I’d imagine this preserves the integrity of their agreement with Cathay Pacific and JAL, other Oneworld members. See @Mak’s comment.
I believe valid routings include –
Cape Town
Johannesburg
Colombo
Maldives
Daca, Bangladesh
Kathmandu, Nepal
Seychelles
Windhoek, Namibia
Erbil or Baghdad, Iraq
AA often has a lot of phantom availability for QR on their website so I wouldn’t assume these calendars and availability are correct without trying to actually book first. Been burned by that before.
@ Larry
I’ve been finding that a lot, I’ve been trying the past week since I first found out about it for multiple dates for MLE to JFK in March 2022, it shows 4 seats for multiple dates but every time I call in to book it, there is none or at most 2 available.
Anyone have any luck booking 4?