Qatar Reward seats via Virgin but not Qantas

Can someone please explain what is going on with Qatar and Qantas? You can't find a Classic Reward flight using Frequent Flyer points for love nor money on Qantas site for a Qatar flight yet they are supposed to be part of One World? Yet...on the Virgin Web site, it's easy to find a Rewards seat using Velocity Points for a Qatar flight, Business flights included...it's time Qantas gave us all some kind of explanation!? Seems like an Alliance is stronger than a One World partnership!?

Your assessment of the situation is correct: Qatar clearly is favouring its partnership with Virgin over its partnership with Qantas. As long as the terms of the Oneworld Alliance are not being breached, Qatar is not doing anything improper, nor is it uncommon for airlines to favour some partners over others. One of many examples: Singapore Airlines releases more Business class reward seats to Velocity and Aeroplan than most of its other partners.

So what you're seeing is no doubt frustrating to those who want to use Qantas points to fly Qatar, but not unusual.

Of course Qatar values Virgin more than Qantas. Qantas clearly degrades everyone else due to an emirates partnership outside of OneWorld.

OneWorld has been dying off for years in Oceania.

Interestingly, there are numerous Qatar seats when you search for Avios availability with British Airways (also part of oneworld). I have a Qantas account as well and there are many times when Qatar sears come up on BA but not on Qantas for the same day!

Another blunder by Alan Joyce. Had that partnership been consummated with Qatar instead of Emirates, it would have presented an all round better value proposition for all stakeholders, FF rtw bookings, oneworld partnership, network leveraging, stellar in flight offering.

So...You can book Qatar Airways redemptions online via Velocity Frequent Flyer, you can transfer Velocity Points to KrisFlyer for Singapore flights and Virgin have an Alliance with United.. does this mean that the best option for Australians is no longer to accumulate Frequent-flyer Points but to swap to and accumulate Velocity Points (seen previously as being inferior) for overseas travel using points!? Your views please!?

FYI it's always been an issue, well before QR inked their partnership with VA. You have very rarely been able to get QF FF seats on QR, and certainly never between Doha and Australia. Occasionally you'll find them available on random one way sectors say between USA and Doha or to Europe. And it's entirely down to QFs alliance with EK, i definitely wouldn't blame QR on this one... Why on earth AJ thinks it's a great idea to keep using the alliance with tacky bling bling and overated EK when he could in effect have one for free with OW airline QR who oozes quality and class, is totally beyond me. Even Hamad Airport is a world above the crowded masses of DXB. Move on AJ and bring in some fresh blood to the QF CEO role.

I have a few contributions on this topic. Firstly MKS11, prior to COVID disruptions I easily booked Perth-Doha-Barcelona and Frankfurt-Doha-Perth. Business class outboard, First Class return. When I say easily, I did research what was being released each day in the period up to making the booking and I am Gold FF so get first go at released seat. For example I could not get Paris-Doha, so I searched around for a location to return from. Of course that trip did not happen.

The current situation with Qatar (QR) reward seats for QFF members is penalising QFF customers and I think should get more attention in media. I read elsewhere that when the VA agreement started with QR, all availability of classic reward seats disappeared from the QFF site. It was later reported that QFF would only offer classic reward seats on QR, something like 6 months before the travel date, which everybody knows is next to useless if you seeking premium seats. The seats are there and available to One World FF members OTHER THAN QANTAS. Try setting up a BA Exec club membership and check it out. I also found that the QFF website would identify availability of classic reward seats, particularly for flights that don't include an Australian airport, but then when that day was selected, there was no flight offered. I saw this a number of times and then found that I could see on the BA website that there was a QR classic reward flight available for that that sector.

The One World conditions allow QF to determine what classic reward seats they offer from other OW members, so QF are at liberty to not offer QR seats. However it should be understood by QFF members that this is happening. It may be that QF view this as competing with VA, however I can't understand the logic. It could also be part of QF's strategy to maximise profit by not trading QFF points for seat on other airlines. This seems possible, given that there is next to no availability of classic reward seat on QF flights that I would book onto - even in economy.

Nett outcome for me is I have close to 1 million QFF points and I am making my next trip to Europe on other airlines. I did book one sector on points, on a BA flight.

Thanks GregXL but I have two questions:

First, what makes you so sure that it's Qantas FF that's withholding available reward seats on Qatar, and not Qatar withholding reward seats from Qantas?

Second, are you certain that ALL Oneworld airlines "other than Qantas" have more Qatar availability available? I haven't looked for a month or two but when I last checked, the availability of Qatar flights using Cathay/Asia Miles was, if anything, worse than on Qantas.

You'll rarely find me defending Qantas over anything, but to be fair, it's not obvious to me that Qantas is at fault here.

Sibelius, I did see evidence on the QFF classic award booking site that flights that corresponded to QR flights were shown as available, in the summary of availability per day, but when that day was selected, the site showed no availability. This was for city pairs not operated by QF, and the points and "taxes" were the same as appeared on the BA website for a QR service. I saw this a number of times in November. Due to the time of year (ie flights are now being released for late Dec 23) it would be difficult to replicate the situation. QFF may have also changed their web client since then. I did reach out to Qantas at the time, but did not receive any feedback of value.

Further to my comments on QF classic reward availability, I did check today and found good availability for Perth-Singapore, in both classes up to the end of June. After that it is nil. This corresponds to Qantas' big apology announcement about releasing reward seats, and the financial year boundary seems to be a point of strategy change.

I don't believe it is the case that PER-SIN reward seats from July onwards are all already booked. I have checked on release on many occasions and the only availability I have seen was on the extra flight that was announced and has since been un-announced.

FYI - a tonne of premium reward seats open up to VA FFs 1-2 weeks out from travel on QR. I held out to 1 week before Christmas as I could see this trend happening every week for a month when I started looking, and snagged me business+first to Europe return. Looked at Qantas at same time as have heaps of points to use there and no premium seats available only economy. Pretty sure the QF/QR relationship isn't the best since QF lobbied against QR increasing their traffic rights to Australia recently. A positive about VA redemptions is the low taxes paid on SQ and UA bookings in comparison to QF and EK etc, although I think SQ just increased but still reasonable.

I'm not sure what made VA points previously seen as inferior? They had good partner network to use to get to all your mainstream destinations, and for years their fees and surcharges across other major carriers were minor compared to QF.