Purchasing business class tickets using cash can be expensive. Purchasing them on redemption using Avios is probably the best way of redemption, but often challenging as these allocations are very limited and go quickly for popular routes, and peak times. Understanding How to Upgrade on Qatar Airways: Fare Types- Avios & Insider Strategies is key.
Once you have sufficient Avios, consider upgrading or redeeiming them for buisness class tickets. In general redeeming Avios for economy class tickets is not the best value.
Below is a simple redemption chart excluding taxes and surcharges, to give you an idea of the Avios required for a return flight from Johannesburg.
Award flights are not easily available and very limited, for most flights there are around 2 business class available and these are often sold out a year in advance for good dates, An alternate option is to upgrade from economy to business.
Before you consider an upgrade path to business class, it is important to understand the different class fares. Discounted or lite fares are often excluded for upgrade possibilities. Below is a table of the primary class fares.
Lite fares would be in general the cheapest and comfort/elite fares the most expensive. However, promo codes when available more often affect higher class fares more positively (as the discount codes do not apply to taxes and fees). It is important to note that award seats using Avios for both redemptions and upgrades on each flight are very limited depending on inter-alia, the route and load factor. Its always best to purchase your tickets directly with Qatar Airways for the least hassle.
Upgrade options:
Use advanced tools such as Seats.aero to ascertain seat availability on specific flights. These should provide an indication on the number of seats available. However, that alone is not a guarantee that upgrade options will be available, particularly for Avios upgrades.
Summary of steps:
- Purchase a better economy fare class type if you intend to upgrade later. Check for promo codes.
- Use the “My Calculator” function on Qatar Airways, to calculate the Avios required to upgrade each/all segments.
- Determine which segments (or all) you wish to upgrade, depending on feasibility.
- Familiarise yourself with the different upgrade options above and check these as they become available.
- Usually the cheapest option (for most cases of upgrades) will be the Avios online upgrade options on the website/app.
Illustrative Example:
The above example is for a general return flight from JNB to Middle East (Layover in Doha – Total 4 segment flight). Certain longer flights may be less feasible.
In this example it was overall cheaper to buy the more expensive comfort fare and then upgrade using Avios before the flight. This option is not always available before the flight as it would depend on several factors.
If upgrading using Avios at the airport check in, the Avios requirement is more by 50%.
The trick here is to get Avios as cheap as possible.