Back in February Qatar Airways announced they will be adopting Avios in place of Qmiles as the loyalty currency in their Privilege Club program. That time has come and as of March 22 the switch has been made. Qatar Airways Privilege Club members now earn and burn Avios and any Qmiles in accounts up to this date have been converted 1:1 to Avios.
Avios is the currency of all the IAG airline’s frequent flyer programs, namely British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, Aer Lingus Aer Club and Vueling Club. Seeing that Qatar Airways is a 25% owner of IAG the switch to Avios makes sense. Even though all the airlines run their own frequent flyer programs the commonality of Avios provides members the option to transfer them between programs. The most popular has been between British Airways and Iberia since the latter tends to charge much less on award ticket fees and taxes but I have a feeling the addition of Qatar Airways Privilege, in which you can already transfer Avios from British Airways to will become a very popular option as well.
If you currently have accounts with British Airways Executive Club and Qatar Airways Privilege Club you can link accounts with a very simple process. I assume if you don’t have one or the other it is easy enough to just join the program and then follow these steps to link your accounts so that you can transfer Avios between them. If you haven’t joined Qatar Airways Privilege Club you should do so with their current offer that awards 2,500 Qmiles Avios for joining by March 31 with promo code FLYQR3 and then 5,000 more if you take a flight with them. Click here to join
🔎 FFB Recommendation: Be sure to always check our Qatar Airways Privilege Club Bonus Avios page for bonus offers on flights, hotels, car rentals and more before you book any travel or as in this case before you join the program as we have the above offer and another join offer listed there. Check out the bonus Avios page here.
Linking Privilege Club & Executive Club Accounts
To begin with you can go the new Avios page on Qatar Airways website where you can click the Link my accounts button
On the next page you’ll see the following:
When you click on Link account with British Airways Executive Club you’ll be taken to BA’s site to login and once you have done that your accounts will be linked and you’ll be presented with the following:
And that’s all it takes to link your accounts!
Combining Avios between accounts
Once that is done navigate to your Privilege Club account dashboard and you’ll see an option that says ‘Combine Avios’
Click on ‘Combine Avios’ and you’ll be brought to the page where you can move Avios between your Qatar Airways and British Airways accounts:
As I am currently sitting on no Avios in either of my accounts I couldn’t go any further however it is on this page where you would set the amount you want to transfer and you can move the Avios over instantly.
British Airways Executive Club matches Privilege Club
To match Qatar Airways redemption requirements British Airways has lowered the Avios requirement for redeeming for Qatar Airways Qsuite awards including the taxes and fees. This means you can redeem 70,000 Avios one way for flights from North America to Doha.
This is good for the direct flights to Doha however since British Airways prices flights by segment if connect beyond Doha you are better off moving your BA Avios over to Qatar Airways. For example Montreal-Doha-Madlives is only 85,000 Avios with Qatar Airways but 105,000 Avios via British Airways.
Wrapping it up
Qatar Airways has changed the currency in their Privilege Club frequent flyer program from Qmiles to Avios and by doing so have now become an even better option for points and miles collectors. Now that you can transfer Avios 1:1 to Qatar Airways from British Airways it has opened up greater access to Qatar’s amazing premium class products for those people in countries where it wasn’t very easy to earn Qatar Airways Qmiles outside of actually flying with the airline as there are so many credit card options around the world where you can earn with British Airways. In the end there will be times you’ll want to redeem via British Airways and at other times via Qatar Airways and they have made it easy for either with the easy transfer between the two.
Click here to learn more about Qatar Airways switch to Avios
Anyone else having problems linking accounts? It says my first name, last name, or DOB do not match! I’ve double checked in both accounts and they are listed exactly the same…. haven’t been able to contact anyone from BA or Qatar to get this fixed….
Same for me and my wife. Information looks the same in both Qatar and BA accounts, but I received the same message that the data does not match.
I was able to transfer Avios from my BA account to my Qatar account. But when I go to transfer the same Avios back from my Qatar account to my BA account, I get the error, “Sorry. The transfer was unsuccessful Unfortunately, we are not able to process your request. Please try again after some time.”
Can someone please check to see whether they are facing the same issue?