Gold Member
Established Member
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2008
- Posts
- 2,313
I recently dropped from QR Gold to Silver status. But well before the scheduled soft landing date, I noticed that the complimentary 40 Qcredits afforded to soft landed Gold members were scheduled to expire 24 months later in 2026 (instead of 12 months later in 2025). But as I expected, these have now expired before the 2026 deadline. I think the Account Dashboard incorrectly presented the expiry as 2026 as a glitch when they soft landed us. Anyone else in the same boat?
Suspicious of the Qcredit 2026 expiry, I wanted to make best use of them late last year to upgrade an economy fare from MEL-AUH-xx_ on a skiplag Economy ticket. Upgrading MEL-AUH from Economy to Business would have required 39 Qcredits and would have been the perfect use, albeit stranding 1 single Qcredit in my account. Unfortunately, QR started blocking Business awards on the long hauls to/from Australia for the 2025 peak season just before I started my trip planning. My 39 Qcredit play was snaffled.
I wanted to use the Qcredits for at least something instead of letting them just just expire. So I played around with various end points in the QR booking system (and Google Flights maps) to discover the cheapest combination. For reference, at the time these were AUH, DXB, DEL and IST/SAW. It's no coincidence that these cities house competing airlines like Etihad, Emirates and Turkish offering similar routing.
I ended up booking the cheapest of the lot, ZRH-DOH-AUH one-way in Economy for $750 AUD a few months back. Of course before booking, I checked there were Business awards available, and I then applied the 29 Qcredits to my Economy booking and effectively upgraded myself to Business class for free. The direct ZRH-DOH in Economy was asking $1350 at the time so a nice little saving of $600 AUD and a good use of my remaining Qcredits given the circumstances. The outright Business Direct fare ZRH-DOH was asking over $10K which would have made for a theoretical $9.5K AUD saving over the direct service - not that I'd ever pay that much for a 6 hr business class flight though.
I'm travelling with carry-on only so will drop the final segment as part of the skiplag arrangement. I suspect I might fall ill upon landing in AUH - how unfortunate. And before y'all offer me a few cautionary words of wisdom about skiplagging, I'm aware of and comfortable with the (limited) risks and more than willing to take my chances. I don't make a habit of it, but this is not my first skip lag rodeo. I have 18 hours in AUH before my next onward flight, and there is a twice daily from ZRH so they could always move me to the later flight under an IRROPS scenario. I have planned for other scenarios as well.
Suspicious of the Qcredit 2026 expiry, I wanted to make best use of them late last year to upgrade an economy fare from MEL-AUH-xx_ on a skiplag Economy ticket. Upgrading MEL-AUH from Economy to Business would have required 39 Qcredits and would have been the perfect use, albeit stranding 1 single Qcredit in my account. Unfortunately, QR started blocking Business awards on the long hauls to/from Australia for the 2025 peak season just before I started my trip planning. My 39 Qcredit play was snaffled.
I wanted to use the Qcredits for at least something instead of letting them just just expire. So I played around with various end points in the QR booking system (and Google Flights maps) to discover the cheapest combination. For reference, at the time these were AUH, DXB, DEL and IST/SAW. It's no coincidence that these cities house competing airlines like Etihad, Emirates and Turkish offering similar routing.
I ended up booking the cheapest of the lot, ZRH-DOH-AUH one-way in Economy for $750 AUD a few months back. Of course before booking, I checked there were Business awards available, and I then applied the 29 Qcredits to my Economy booking and effectively upgraded myself to Business class for free. The direct ZRH-DOH in Economy was asking $1350 at the time so a nice little saving of $600 AUD and a good use of my remaining Qcredits given the circumstances. The outright Business Direct fare ZRH-DOH was asking over $10K which would have made for a theoretical $9.5K AUD saving over the direct service - not that I'd ever pay that much for a 6 hr business class flight though.
I'm travelling with carry-on only so will drop the final segment as part of the skiplag arrangement. I suspect I might fall ill upon landing in AUH - how unfortunate. And before y'all offer me a few cautionary words of wisdom about skiplagging, I'm aware of and comfortable with the (limited) risks and more than willing to take my chances. I don't make a habit of it, but this is not my first skip lag rodeo. I have 18 hours in AUH before my next onward flight, and there is a twice daily from ZRH so they could always move me to the later flight under an IRROPS scenario. I have planned for other scenarios as well.
