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Good Qatar Airways Australia availability for 180,000 Avios return in Business

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The cheapest way to get to Australia in Business Class with Avios, by far, is with Qatar Airways.

The cost is only 180,000 Avios return plus around £600 of taxes and charges per person.

Availability comes and goes, but currently looks surprisingly good.

Qatar Airways A350 to Auckland

A comment from Kaconym in our comments section yesterday made me take a look.

Kaconym was correct. Apart from Sydney and Auckland, Business Class Avios availability on the other Qatar Airways routes to Australasia (Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne) is looking pretty good, both short term and long term.

I did a quick survey. This is looking for:

  • 1 x Business Class seat
  • outbound from London
  • priced at standard rates, not the ‘double Avios’ Flexi rate
  • for February 2025 (an off-peak month)
  • booking on the Qatar Airways site (but ba.com availability should match)

Availability will be reduced for two people travelling together. You should still find something, or consider splitting and travelling on consecutive flights.

Here’s what I found:

Melbourne

  • 21 out of 28 days available

Perth

  • 21 out of 28 days available

Brisbane

  • 14 out of 28 days available

Adelaide

  • 27 out of 28 days available

What about taxes and charges?

Here’s a typical total cost including taxes and charges:

Qatar Airways Avios flight to Brisbane

Yes, just 180,000 Avios return for a Business Class seat.

You could reduce the taxes and charges by starting in Dublin, Amsterdam or similar to avoid long haul premium cabin UK Air Passenger Duty.

However, Qatar Airways uses ‘married segment availability’ so its possible that the onward leg to Australia might not show if you start from elsewhere. This rule also applies to departures from Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh.

Remember that the headline British Airways cost to Sydney is 290,000 Avios + £750 off-peak return, on the very rare occasions when there is availability.

You should be able to book via ba.com using the standard Avios booking portal, but it’s worth checking the Qatar Airways site as well. This article explains how to link your British Airways Executive Club and Qatar Airways Privilege Club accounts. You don’t need to transfer your Avios to Qatar Airways – once linked, Qatar Airways is able to pull Avios directly from your BA account when you book.

Here are our latest Qatar Airways reviews

Our most recent Qatar Airways Business Class flight reviews are here, for the new Boeing 787-9, and here for the Qatar Airways A380.

If you are based in London you should also read our review of the excellent Qatar Airways Premium Lounge in Heathrow Terminal 4 and the new Qatar Airways Frequent Flyer lounge in T4, for oneworld elites travelling in Economy, here.

We also have 2023 reviews of the lounges at Doha’s Hamad International Airport if you look through our Qatar Airways articles here.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Category

Qatar Airways and Privilege Club

Comments (108)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Rich Purssell says:
    23 Apr23 April 10:06

    Can you earn any BA Tier points if you book one of these tickets?
    I’m assuming you don’t but there appears to be different pricing levels of Avios so if you use less Avios and pay more for the ticket is there a cut off where you do earn Tier points?

    • Rob says:
      23 Apr23 April 10:16

      No. ‘Flexi’ seats just let you book on busier flights where Qatar is, effectively, taking a bigger hit by opening more reward seats beyond the guaranteed 2 in Business.

  • Amy C says:
    23 Apr23 April 10:35

    I am booked from BNE to LHR in Sept. If I change that to Perth (which I was thinking of doing anyway) and decided to avail myself of a very long layover in DOH (as I get free lodgings there), do I just leave the airport and my checked luggage in their capable hands for 24hrs and stroll out with my hand luggage right? No special transit visas needed. Then come back after a day and trust my luggage will be on the correct flight? Never done anything like that before as always choose the shortest transit.

    • SBIre says:
      23 Apr23 April 11:04

      Yep – that is correct. I did it twice a few months ago.

    • MT says:
      23 Apr23 April 12:10

      If it’s over 24 hours, I didn’t think they’d interline it. Visa free entry is only available to 102 countries (including UK) and you must have a hotel booking (according to website).

  • Ilou says:
    23 Apr23 April 10:51

    On unrelated topic

    What is the best credit card to earn points spending in EUR without paying any fx fees ?

    Without using curve

    • Rob says:
      23 Apr23 April 11:23

      Virgin – no FX fees in Euro (and Sweden and Romania).

      But don’t apply until Thursday.

      • BBbetter says:
        23 Apr23 April 12:03

        Ooooh!

      • Ilou says:
        23 Apr23 April 12:12

        Thanks Rob

      • Bagoly says:
        23 Apr23 April 13:35

        Does anybody know why free in SEK and ROL, but not in DKK, CZK, PLN, HUF, BGN?

        • AeT says:
          23 Apr23 April 15:20

          BGN is definitely included in the no-FX rule – it is just not listed on there. Used the card plenty in Bulgaria a few years back.

        • Optimus Prime says:
          23 Apr23 April 19:22

          It’s fee free for HUF too or at least it was 2 years ago when I paid for a BUD-HNL ticket with my Virgin card

  • Kaconym says:
    23 Apr23 April 11:55

    Glad my comment inspired this article that hopefully leads to lots of people getting these great value redemptions.

    I’ve got quite a few of these redemptions over the past year but I guess I’ve made it harder for myself to get the seats I want in future though lol.

    Oh well

    • Alison says:
      24 Apr24 April 00:53

      I’d been keeping an eye on lhr – doh-per return for Feb and March while I saved up enough avios for 2 rtns in biz … now I’m stuffed! I’ve had to book one way outbound today while stocks last, and hope I can get creative with the rtn routing later on.

    • Optimus Prime says:
      24 Apr24 April 08:28

      Another counterexample of “Sharing is caring” 🙂

  • SteveCroydon says:
    23 Apr23 April 12:25

    I’ve been doing UK-OZ by QR for several years using Avios in Business and First. I’m booked outbound to ADL in January 2025 (the earliest big seat after new year) and waiting to do the return. There’s nothing showing for any QR route from 27th March 2025, although they should be available. That’s via BAEC and QRPC.
    Be careful if using the QRPC Avios booking facility – it’s even worse than ba.com – yes I know, hard to believe! The calendar doesn’t shift one month, it shifts around 6-8 weeks. You select a date from the calendar and it shows you a date 2 weeks earlier. Also you select another date and it stays on the original date. When you have finally selected a flight to book, the timings in the summary bar are usually three hours out from the true times. All in all a total piece of cr@p!
    QRPC is strangely showing a few early April flights from SYD-DOH, but only as 2x Avios Flexi flights – I’m not sure you can actually book them.
    There’s also a new bug in poxy ba.com that has been recently introduced – “sorry there was a problem with your request” – the usual high quality BA/IAG IT systems!

    • Occasional Ranter says:
      23 Apr23 April 14:58

      I’m getting that BA error pretty much continuously over the last few days, searching various routes to/from DOH. Grrrr…

  • Anne says:
    23 Apr23 April 13:02

    Am I doing something wrong please? I can only see the flex business fares for next Feb on Qatar’s website (flying to Perth)?

  • Mike says:
    23 Apr23 April 14:28

    I’m still none the wiser how this works!,,, I tried going on American to check availability but it only seems to run to 330 days ahead? Is that right? Still no clue how to actually find and book a Qatar flight bar searching every date individually.

  • Mike says:
    23 Apr23 April 14:47

    I just found a flight on ba.com Lon to Brisbane business out 5/4 and back 12/4. 198000 + £637. Same search on Qatar site nothing available. Is this expected behaviour?

    Ba should 10 economy out and 22 back. Qatar again nothing.

    • Rob says:
      23 Apr23 April 15:31

      Yes, that’s right (if flight is a peak period one). I once booked a Qatar flight for my wife on ba.com which qatarairways.com didn’t show and all was fine. If you can see it, book it.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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