Qatar- Taxes and charges

[Joe G]

Hi all,

I am about 100,000 avios short of my dream redemption to Australia in business with Qatar.

I would never usually buy avios but I am tempted to use the current boost offer to get me over the line. Before I do I am trying to work out if I can justify the spend.

Would someone happen to know roughly what the costs would be in taxes in charges would roughly be for that redemption vs BA and a 241 voucher?

I’d be hoping to book from Edinburgh to Melbourne I’m not sure if there is any difference from the ex Edi flights to the London ones either in price or availability?

Any help appreciated, thanks

[NorthernLass]

You should be able to start a dummy booking for a date with availability and see approximately what the cash element will be.

BA doesn’t fly to MEL, so I don’t know if you had an alternative route in mind for the 241?

Australia tends to have very high demand, although there should be better availability on QR due to more flights (including some new ones, I think).

[Joe G]

I would be looking at London to Sydney if we used a 241, I think we would take a few weeks and travel around Australia when we were there but ideally Edinburgh – Melbourne would be more convenient.

I appreciate I was a bit lazy asking when I could have done dummy bookings, I will get on that but I find both airlines websites can be a bit fiddly and hoped someone here might know roughly what the difference would be off the top of their head to save me the bother.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

The farthest you’ll be able to get using a 2-4-1 is SYD.

Any internal flights would have to be separate bookings as 2-4-1 can only be used on BA (IB and EI don’t fly to AUS)

Starting in EDI (well anywhere in the regions with a BA service) can open up additional availability that isn’t there for trips starting in LHR.

[LV2000]

I recently booked DUB – PER in a mix of Business and First and then Adelaide – Paris in business (over Christmas and New Year so had to be flexible) and it was in the region of £500 taxes for the outbound and £600 for the inbound for two.

Can’t help to and from EDI sorry. I think taxes were £1000 (for two) from LHR in business for the outbound when I was looking.

[Joe G]

Thanks for the input everyone, I did some digging and think I have managed to work it out.

If anyone is interested Searching for availability I managed to find availability for an Edinburgh Melbourne return business flight on QR and did a dummy booking. The price I was quoted would be 360k avios and £1560 for two people.

Availability for London-Sydney on BA seems non existent (at least according to seatspy) so doing a dummy booking impossible though I might have had better luck searching with the 241 ex EDI if I could be bothered. Instead I used the pricing chart on this site which BA using a 241 off peak I think would be 290k Avios and £1552

So seems the taxes and charges are pretty similar, unless I have made an error somewhere which is interesting as I’d always believed that the taxes and charges element was meant to be less on a QR flight.

Seems though that I’ll have better look actually getting a seat on Qatar from Edinburgh with one less connecting flight so probably the best option despite the slightly higher avios cost.