Qatar Airways Avios price difference

[krautboy]

Hi,

maybe one of you could help me out.

So im looking at booking tickets with Qatar Airways (directly on their website) from Phuket, Thailand to Manchester, UK on 3rd December. Of course this will involve a stop over in Doha, Qatar.

So if I search Phuket to MAN, it shows me the price option of 75k Avios. If I break this up into two bookings, the Avios amount is far cheaper. Taxes roughly remain the same.

Option 1:

03.12: Phuket – Doha – MAN: 75k Avios pp

Option 2 (3 hr stop over):

03.12: Phuket to Doha = 25k Avios pp
04.12: Doha to MAN: 21.5 K Avios pp

I called Qatar to check whether they can actually link the bookings, so that the luggage goes all the way to MAN and we dont have to check in and out again in Doha. (also would require an additional Covid Test). The person was unclear but then said not possible for them.

I know this option would be possible with BA. Can someone confirm whether booking 2 flights separately and have them link the booking is indeed not possible with Qatar?

Many thanks

[memesweeper]

krautboy wrote:

Can someone confirm whether booking 2 flights separately and have them link the booking is indeed not possible with Qatar?

If you’d booked separately, pre-pandemic, then showed up at Phuket airport and asked Qatar to through-check your bags the answer would almost certainly have been “yes”. I’ve not heard of a change in policy. In fact, the only airlines I know that systematically resist this are AA and BA. For other airlines through-checking on request is routine.

If you book separately, and mis-connect, and Qatar are at fault (ie your flights combined were a valid connection and you didn’t miss the first flight), are you concerned you will be stranded at Doha? I’d expect Qatar to look after you in these circumstances. In the unlikely event they didn’t, make sure your insurance will look after you, or you have another plan B. The only slight snag here is that with a single booking the airline might be more proactive in rushing you through the connecting airport if your inbound is delayed. If a delay occurs, you may need to be assertive when faced with queues at transit.

I took an unprotected connection with AF last week: they through checked the bag (I didn’t ask in advance if they would, but they did), issued me a single multi-flight boarding pass — and it didn’t even cross my mind to worry if they’d leave me stranded in Paris if the connection fell through. I just assumed they’d be fine with it and put me on the next flight. The reason for two bookings was one was a Virgin redemption and the other a Flying Blue redemption.

Linking the bookings is not a big deal, per se. In most circumstances it’s just baggage and connections that matter.

The exception to both these rules are low-cost carriers in Europe and BA. The LCCs I can understand, but BA? 🤷🏼‍♂️

[DonLee]

75000 is 2x flex ticket I guess. By searching you could book Business for 75000 HKT – Doh – MAN on 4th Dec