Qatar Airways Privilege Club transitioned to offer Avios instead of their own currency back in 2022. Since then, while it has been easy to pool Avios from various accounts (British Airways, Iberia Plus, Qatar Airways Privilege Club and so on), the programme has continuously evolved to become more and more like BA Executive Club.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club rolls out Peak Pricing on award tickets.

One of the latest instances of moving to become more like the BA Executive Club has been ongoing at Qatar Airways Privilege Club but is now completely rolled out. The airline has started separating reward tickets throughout the year into “off-peak” and “peak” pricing dates, where the peak dates are priced at approximately 20% more points. As of last evening, labels for “off-peak”, which reflect the standard pricing, have started appearing across the board on Qatar Airways redemption searches.

While earlier on, the peak pricing did not affect transit passengers, but rather just passengers who were arriving/departing from Doha, this has now changed, affecting routes in Europe, the US, and Asia.

Here is how it changes pricing from an Indian perspective:

• Delhi / Mumbai to Europe in Qatar Airways Business Class used to be 55,000 Avios one way, but it is now 66,000 Avios on peak days
• Delhi / Mumbai to North America in Qatar Airways Business Class used to be 80,000 Avios one way, but is now 96,000 Avios on peak days
• Rest of India to Australia in Qatar Airways Economy Class used to be 42,500 Avios one way, but it is now 51,000 Avios on peak days.

The pricing changes affect Q Suites and non-Q Suites business-class products.

 

Qatar’s Peak Pricing Calendar

Peak pricing has been implemented by routes (perhaps decided by historic traffic flows), which means that while a particular flight might appear to peak on a stand-alone basis, it might be off-peak when combined with something else (using the married sector logic). For example, JFK-DOH is off-peak on December 7-9, but JFK-MCT (via DOH) is off-peak only on December 8-9.

However, there is largely semblance in the dates affected. The calendar looks as such (courtesy of MainlyMiles):

• December 5, 2023 to January 21, 2024: Peak
• January 22, 2024 to March 27, 2024: Off-Peak
• March 28, 2024 to April 26, 2024: Peak
• April 27, 2024 to June 11, 2024: Off-Peak
• June 12, 2024 to September 1, 2024: Peak
• September 2, 2024 to November 29, 2024: Off-Peak

As someone over on X (Formerly Twitter) pointed out, these dates align with the academic season start dates, so that makes sense. Revenue tickets are priced high, and it makes sense for QR to charge more for reward seats. So the year is now split roughly as 33% Peak and 66% Off-Peak for Qatar Airways.

Remember, this is separate from the Q2/Flexi Pricing of Qatar Airways Privilege Club, where Qatar Airways unlocks more seats on double-pricing redemptions.

Bottomline

Qatar Airways has introduced peak and off-peak pricing to most of its award redemptions, if not all, taking up the number of points required on affected days by 20%. This change affects all pricing and is unrelated to the Flexi tickets (Q2) pricing, where Qatar Airways offers tickets at a double redemption rate.

What do you think of Qatar Airways’ new award pricing rules?

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