Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The bottom line is this: I am not making any speculative Qatar Airways bookings after Qatar changed the terms of its very lucrative flexible ticket policy.
An Incredible Qatar Airways Deal Remains An Incredible Deal, In Theory
Last week, Qatar Airways announced a flexible and innovative new ticketing policy, meant to encourage
advance bookings through the remainder of 2020. Ticketing options include:
- Hold on to your ticket – Now valid for two years
- Unlimited changes – Change the date or destination free of charge
- Exchange for future travel – With 10% additional value and valid for two years
- Swap for Qmiles – Flexible to use as you wish and valid for three years (1 cent each)
- Refund your ticket – full refund if your flight gets cancelled
The second option is most appealing, since Qatar is allowing you to change your travel date or destination free of charge, as often as you need, for travel until 31 December 2020. You can change your origin to another city within the same country and destination to any other destination Qatar serves within a 5,000 mile radius of your original destination.
That certainly created many interesting opportunities. For North American travelers, you could book a $1639 business class ticket from Philadelphia to Kiev and change your departure point to anywhere in the USA and your destination to anywhere within a 5,000-mile radius. That meant Los Angeles to Bangkok, Chicago to London, Atlanta to the Maldives, or New York to Shanghai among the many options.
Killer deal, right? You could literally book Philadelphia to Kiev and five minutes later change it. No re-issue fee, no hassle.
But over the weekend, Qatar Airways tightened up the deal a bit. You now must wait 14 days from time of booking to make voluntary changes to your ticket. Your new destination must also have the same booking class available. It also pulled the $1639 fare to Kiev, though there remains a fare to Tbilisi for just over $2,000.
These changes are not a deal-breaker alone, but the no-notice change in policy should send up red flags.
Count Me As Skeptical…
When news broke of this deal, I did not write about it. I thought it was a fabulous deal, but there had to be a catch. When Qatar Airways confirmed that there was no catch, I still did not write about it. Not because I saw any ethical concerns whatsoever with “gaming” bookings, but because I did not want any readers to be stuck with tickets they could not use. That was an initial fear and remains a fear.
This is not a trick, beyond a marketing trick by Qatar Airways. It is not a mistake. Not an error fare. With demand expected to remain depressed until the end of 2020, this is actually a smart strategy that will fill up open seats.
But I just hate it when airline change terms without notice. Now there is just a new waiting period and fare class requirement, but what might happen next? Will the 5,000 mile radius be whittled down? Will changes be limited to once only? What if all the cheap business class fare classes are zeroed out, effectively prohibiting changes? I’m sorry, but I’m not booking any speculative trips with so much uncertainty in the air. I predict that Qatar Airways may further modify this promotion as demand evolves.
CONCLUSION
Too bad this deal does not extend into 2021 or I would have pulled the trigger on a trip to Germany. This deal remains excellent and will make sense for a lot of people. But the old “fool me once” proverb should be at the forefront of any speculative bookings. Be careful not to get burned…
> Read More: Qatar Airways 777-300ER Qsuite Business Class New York to Doha Review
Never trust Arabs. They say one thing, then do another. Witness Al Jazeera in Arabic vs English.
Let’s not go there.
Hi Matthew,
If you issued a ticket on May 15 when then May 13 guidelines were in place, do they have to allow you to change using the original terms and conditions?
I’m not worried about the 14 days but I’m worried where previously when purchased you could book into J-C-D-I but now it has to be R. I would have never bought them with this condition. Does the DOT allow a carrier to change T&C after purchase?
DOT does not allow this. Original terms must be honored. But that won’t necessarily stop Qatar from insisting upon the new rules. It didn’t stop United with refunds…
With that I wonder if all of these hacks are actually worth it in the end. Maybe a few like the CX mistake fare (only because they honored it). With bloggers making sure every Bob and Martha in the world knows about them (not a criticism) and then airlines able to do whatever they want to squash them free of oversight when they catch on, it’s become this constant recurring theme now. And it’s only going to get worse. In the end you spend hours and hours on the phone trying to fight it, trying to get them to back down (like your Swiss debacle), and for what in the end. Often in a worse position than you were. Or in this case possibly a vacation in Kiev. Or Yemen.
Too bad! Glad I waited before pulling the trigger on this “great” deal
I was right at the point of booking this to Kiev and changing to BKK after. Then saw the news. On the one hand it felt dirty of Qatar. On the other hand they probably saw what everyone was doing given the deluge of posts everywhere, the sudden surge of Kiev becoming the world’s most popular destination, and decided that this was not what it was intended for. You could argue either side.
Even if the Kiev fare was still there (did not know about Tbilsi) I would still not book it now. The next step will be that, as you say, they zero out all the discounted business class in the next 14 days and you are on the hook for thousands more to wherever, or a December week long holiday in Tbilsi. Well, at least the food is good there.
I think QR trusted people’s good intentions more than they should have…it’s hard for me to see this as a bait and switch even with the 14 day wait period and inventory validation requirement. Cleary this was being abused in large numbers, or they wouldn’t have pulled all the fares from the US to Kiev. If you want to blame anyone, blame the blogosphere
Exactly!
+1,000,000 likes!
It is not about trusting them or not. The problem is that every time there is good intention people find ways to take advantage. Many bloggers posted on how good this deal was and how you could basically “game the system”. I wrote on one post that this deal would be dead soon since many were taking advantage in a bad way. They were booking routes they would never take (like flying to Kiev) just because it was cheaper and then making changes on purpose. This was intended to help people that needed to make changes but as always people took advantage of it. Thus, they had to tight it up.
But do they really expect planes to fill up? I’d think that $1639 is a lot better than an open seat.
i purchased a fare on friday and then tried to make a change on Sunday. The agent was initially not allowed to make the change, but after telling him that the rule was not there when i made the original booking, got manager approval and changes were made. All done in 10 min…changes to destination and date.
They didn’t just pull the fare from the US to Kiev. All the lucrative fares from Europe (FRA-DOH-NRT for $1700 and HEL-DOH for $1000 in Business) were pulled as well. It looks like they generally pulled “R” class inventory which prohibits people who are booked in cheap business fares (R class) from rebooking since the fare class is not available.
If you play this game you win some and you loose some
@ Matthew — I think your article is a bit hyperbolic. Short of a war, there is about zero chance that Qatar is going to cease operations in the next two years. They are also not going to stop making R inventory available. They sold at most about 10,000 tickets PHL-KBP that were perhaps immediately converted into routes such LAX-BKK, which probably goes on sale once a year for about $2,500 in R class. I don’t think they are going to change the way they sell fare classes for the next 2 years to avoid a $9 million “expense” for a promotion. I think they will take the $16 million of cash and be happy.
Which begs the question, why modify the original terms for planes that would have gone out empty anyways in 2020?
I didn’t book this…simply because I didn’t want the hassle/drama in the event of change. I’m pretty sure that very good deals will still be available in the future, at a time when there is greater certainty about scheduling/routing. I’d sooner wait for those opportunities rather than put money up front in a ‘deal’ like this one.
Pot calling kettle….