Transfer Amex Points to Qatar Avios for a 20% Bonus

Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios card
For a limited time, transfer Amex Points to Qatar Airways and get a 20% bonus. Image: Qatar Airways.

Australians can now transfer Amex Membership Rewards points to Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios. To celebrate, Qatar Airways is giving 20% bonus Avios when you transfer points from American Express between 19 July and 18 August 2023.

Transfers from Amex Membership Rewards to Qatar Avios became available from last week and take place at a 2:1 conversion rate. There’s a minimum transfer requirement of 500 Amex Membership Rewards points, which would be worth 250 Qatar Avios. Transfers are generally instant but could take up to one business day.

To earn 20% bonus Avios as part of this promotion, you would need to transfer at least 2,000 Amex points to Qatar Airways Privilege Club in a single transaction. You can earn the bonus on an unlimited number of conversions during the promotion period.

According to the offer terms and conditions, which are available on the American Express website, the bonus Avios will be credited to your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account up to 45 days after the end of the campaign period.

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What could you do with Qatar Airways Avios?

Perhaps the most popular use of Qatar Avios is Qatar Airways Business Class flights and upgrades.

For example, it costs 90,000 Avios (plus $342.30 in taxes & carrier charges) for a one-way Qatar Airways Business Class redemption from Perth to Edinburgh.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club redemption booking PER-EDI
Example of a Qatar Airways Business Class redemption from Perth to Edinburgh, booking through the Qatar Airways website.

With this Amex Membership Rewards transfer bonus, you could get 90,000 Qatar Avios by transferring just 150,000 Amex Membership Rewards points to Qatar Airways Privilege Club. You’d immediately receive 75,000 Qatar Avios, then an additional 15,000 Avios (the 20% bonus) at a later date.

Qatar Airways A380 Business Class
Qatar Airways A380 Business Class. Photo: Qatar Airways.

By comparison, if you wanted to book a Singapore Airlines Business Class redemption from Perth to Europe, you’d need at least 119,500 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles. That’s equivalent to 239,000 Amex Membership Rewards points at the current 2:1 transfer rate from Amex to KrisFlyer. (From October 2023, the conversion rate from Amex Membership Rewards to KrisFlyer will become 3:1 – meaning you’d need 358,500 Amex points to make the same booking.)

As Qatar Airways is part of the Oneworld alliance, you can also redeem Qatar Avios to fly on other Oneworld airlines – as well as partners such as RwandAir, Oman Air and LATAM Airlines.

Read our guide to redeeming Qatar Airways Avios for more information.

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
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And for those of you with a US Amex, the US site is offering a 30% bonus transferring Amex point to BA or Iberia (Avios)

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Hi all,
I’m wondering if anyone knows what award availability to Europe from Australia is like with Qatar privileges program? We’ve used KrisFlyer last year and this year but the new transfer rates with Amex and the signature amplify make that a very expensive program for Australians. Any advice? Thank you

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I had a look myself, there appears to be a lot of availability but have managed to find the mythical 90k reward,

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I had a look myself, there appears to be a lot of availability but have managed to find the mythical 90k reward,

Is that you can't find them? I've been looking fo ages and also can't find the mythical 90K Euro tickets.

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Is that you can't find them? I've been looking fo ages and also can't find the mythical 90K Euro tickets.

Sorry, yes can’t!

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Thank you for clarifying. But oh dear…. That doesn’t bode well for the new transfer partner to Amex. I’m not sure I’d worth keeping the Amex card.

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I may not be looking hard enough, but I don't think are ANY 90k Euro tickets on the QR site, whatever the date of flying. I think I may have transferred my AmEx points a bit too quick. They have changed the goal posts and it has nothing to do with the summer Olympics next year.

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So I've been playing around trying to understand what's going on, it seems that Qatar has pulled almost all availability between North America - Doha and Australia - Doha, it doesn't matter which direction you look at.

According to seats.aero, in the next 12 months there's 2 J reward flights available between NA - Doha at the normal 90k rate and 130 or so to Australia. Pretty slim pickings compared to overall 8300~ flights between Europe - Doha.

Reply 1 Like

What does this line in the T&C mean:

  • The bonus Avios will be calculated on per transaction basis and not on the coughulative sum of base Avios converted from Membership Rewards® points during the Campaign Period.

Struggle to see what the difference is between these two scenarios they are trying to distinguish?

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I may not be looking hard enough, but I don't think are ANY 90k Euro tickets on the QR site, whatever the date of flying. I think I may have transferred my AmEx points a bit too quick. They have changed the goal posts and it has nothing to do with the summer Olympics next year.

Maybe all the 90k tickets got snapped up by the barrage of transfers from the new Amex partnership? Is that likely?

I have never booked directly with Qatar before so I don't know how available they usually are.

The one time I did book with Qatar through Cathay was a rather unpleasant non-transparent process with the hidden surcharge fees not made apparent til the very end.

Not off to a good start with Qatar here.

It really does look like the good old days of readily available "free" J class travel is over....

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