I’m a long way from learning how to pronounce “Qatar” correctly, but I’ve learned a lot of other geeky things from watching Greg’s how-to videos. This time, I will explain how to find his QSuite award ticket to Qatar. (For all you newbies like me, riding QSuites is like the trip equivalent of getting tickets to a Taylor Swift-era tour. Am I wrong?)
Here are some things I learned from Greg’s latest How-To video. (He also includes timestamps so you can go directly to each part on YouTube if you want. But it’s a pretty short video, so if you’d rather watch it all the way up above instead.)
What we learned from watching Greg find QSuite award tickets for Qatar:
- 00:00 – Even if you don’t use American Airlines miles, the American Airlines website is the easiest place to search for Qatar Airways benefits. This is mainly thanks to the convenient calendar view available on the website.
- 00:28 – Easily find benefit availability with a one-way search. (To take it a step further, Greg starts by searching for flights to Doha, Qatar Airways’ hub.)
- 01:35 – Search for flights to Doha and filter your calendar view for “direct flights only”. generally Limit all flight results to Qatar Airways only.
- 02:18 – However, be aware of the taxes and fees on the flights you select on the American Airlines calendar. If the fees are very high, you may choose to fly with British Airways instead.
- 04:19 – Once you find a flight that is acceptable to you, you can use Google Flights to see if that flight has “separate suites.” This means it will probably be within QSuite, but this is not guaranteed. Because there are other individual suite products in Qatar, and because aircraft can be changed at any time at the last minute.
- 06:35 – If you want to search for flights from Doha onwards, enter your destination and filter the American Airlines calendar by “1 stop or less” instead. The assumption here is that Doha is the first destination and the destination is his second destination.
- 07:26 – The easiest way to find general availability is on the American Airlines site, but if you can’t find a better destination, it’s worth searching on Qatar Airways’ own site (or another partner’s site). There may be. Because American Airlines doesn’t have access to all the flights you can find on other airlines. As an example, Greg initially found availability on the American Airlines site from Chicago to Doha for a specific date in June, but when he tried to find an option to fly from Chicago to the Maldives instead, he found June options have disappeared. So he visits QatarAirways.com and his BritishAirways.com to see if his June dates in the Maldives destination appear again on QatarAirways.com or his AA.com I recommended that.
Bonus tip from Greg not included in the video:
- American Airlines’ website may be the easiest to search, but you can only see award space up to 11 months out, compared to British Airways and Qatar, where you can see (and book) award space an additional 11 months out. Please note that you cannot.
- Very easy way to find routes operated by Qatar flightconnection.com Filter for Qatar Airways. (In the video, Greg searched from Chicago to Doha. Tools like Flight Connections can help you decide which route to search.)
If you learned something new by watching this how-to video, let us know by commenting below. (If there are any other how-tos you’d like to see.)
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