BA removes Qatar ‘R’ business class from tier point and Avios earning

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This week saw the launch of the British Airways / Qatar Airways revenue sharing deal on routes from the UK to Doha which I discussed here. This means that BA and Qatar are effectively operating as one airline on these routes with the revenue being shared out between them, irrespective of carrier used.

Regular Head for Points readers will know that Qatar Airways regularly has incredibly cheap business class sales from Europe which credit to British Airways Executive Club and make requalification for Executive Club status very easy. One £900 return ticket to Bangkok would get you over 90% of the way to a BA Silver card.

No longer.

It seems that, as part of the revenue sharing deal, British Airways will now refuse to credit heavily discounted Qatar Airways business class tickets to Executive Club. You will not receive ANY Avios or tier points at all.

They do NOT appear to be giving any leeway for tickets booked before this week.

Here is the key page of the Executive Club website:

Note that ‘R’ is missing next to ‘Business’.

This is not a mistake, based on various Twitter and call centre conversations reported on Flyertalk. That said, ‘R’ class flights do still show up in the Avios miles calculator tool.

Oddly, Qatar Airways ‘R’ class DOES still appear as an earning miles and status points in Iberia Plus as at 5am today (click to enlarge):

…. and, of course, all other oneworld frequent flyer programmes continue to offer credit for ‘R’ class Qatar Airways tickets.

If you have an ‘R’ class Qatar Airways ticket booked, do not panic immediately. Some clarity on what is happening should emerge over the next couple of days. If the worst comes to the worst you can credit the flight to a different frequent flyer scheme – possible even Iberia Plus to earn Avios – although that won’t help you earn BA status of course.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

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British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

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We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

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You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

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Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus, Qatar Airways and Privilege Club

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Andy says:

3 Nov3 November 09:15

Umm, BA Exec Club just told me there is actually no change and earnings in R class will continue.
- Kip says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 09:33
  
  Was that on the phone or email?
  
  This looks like a website error to me. I can understand reducing the tier points to a more revenue based total but offering no Avios points on a £1800 fare doesn’t make sense.
  
  I hope so, because I have an R QR flight in 2 weeks.
  - Andy says:
    
    3 Nov3 November 09:44
    
    On the phone half an hour ago. Have also emailed them on the back on that conversation with my upcoming flight details that I cited and asked them to get back to me should they disagree wth the 140 TP per sector calculation that quoted to me.
    - Kip says:
      
      3 Nov3 November 09:59
      
      Thanks.
      Not offering points for revenue flights surely undermines the whole principle of frequent flyer schemes. Will give them a day or two to see how this pans out.
- Polly says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 09:53
  
  Good info Andy. Let’s hope it’s a screw up with their IT system. It would be so dishonourable not to grant bookings already made. Saying that, the calculator still states TPS and avios for R class. So, let’s wait and see.
- James says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 10:51
  
  That’s what I like to hear!
Ian says:

3 Nov3 November 09:25

I only booked with Qatar because of the miles and points. I will be incredibly annoyed with BA if they don’t honour retrospective bookings – particularly after they made a point of changing the rules earlier this year to include R class.

It just goes to show that these revenue sharing agreements offer no benefits to consumers and should be examined by the authorities for reducing competition on fares and being detrimental to consumers
Sam G says:

3 Nov3 November 09:34

Makes that Groupon coupon a lot more interesting if that comes back!
Damboy says:

3 Nov3 November 09:54

Hi. So do I understand correctly that even flights ex-Europe on Qatar will no longer earn tier points on BA if heavily discounted fares. I’m currently in Malaysia having flown out end of October from Helsinki and we return in a few days time. The 280 tier points for the outward leg have been credited to my BA account. To keep my BA gold card I need the return flights to credit tier points to my BA account. Will this still credit after these changes or am I in trouble? One of the main reasons I took these flights was to re-earn gold status. Any advice much appreciated.
Oli says:

3 Nov3 November 09:58

Interestingly if you go on the Avios flight calculator page (https://www.britishairways.com/travel/flight-calculator/execclub/_gf/en_gb) it still shows R as being awarded full tier points. I will find out more after Tuesday as I have 2 sectors booked in R.

If they do decide to not honour the agreement I will stop flying BA and move to another loyalty program.
Graeme says:

3 Nov3 November 10:01

BAEC Louise just sent the message to FT BA forum

Dear all,

This is an error, R class should not have been removed. We are updating ba.com to reflect this.

Apologies for the confusions.

Warm Regards
Louise
- Rashad says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 11:08
  
  Good news, got me worried for a bit. Thank you for posting this Graeme.
  Best Wishes
Roger Hardplease says:

3 Nov3 November 10:11

Should probably have actually fact checked this with BA before publishing fallacious Flyertalk chatter as fact.
- Radiata says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 10:26
  
  Given that Raffles took this directly from BA website that is deeply unfair.
  
  Grateful for the heads up and indeed perhaps hubbub ensuing led to BA making explicit that an error made.
- fbrj says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 10:30
  
  Crikey – I can understand why you have such a handle!
  
  To be fair, the article did state…..”It seems….” and that “This is not a mistake” was based on various twitter conversations and a (linked) FT thread. To my mind, that was plenty of qualification surrounding what was known at the time and you could make your own mind up by reading the link provided.
- Oli says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 10:32
  
  Imagine the uproar if Raffles hadn’t mentioned it and then it turned out to be true…
  
  “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”
  
  “I come here for the best advice and have lost xx amount of tier points because you didn’t tell us”
  
  etc etc!
  - Rob says:
    
    3 Nov3 November 10:57
    
    There is also a big Qatar sale on at the moment which meant I did not want to delay, just in case.
- Rob says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 10:59
  
  BA had confirmed it via Twitter. I wrote this at 4am UK time when options were limited.
  
  Note that the BA press office could have contacted me – they have my mobile – but did not.
  
  Where was the downside? Existing ticket holders had to sit it out anyway. I was able to stop some people making a potentially expensive mistake in the current 241 sale though.
Calz says:

3 Nov3 November 10:37

Just checked my QR booking on the BA Manage my booking page for R-class from EDI-DOH for Dec (that I booked in July). Its still showing all TP and Avios that i’m expecting to earn. Thanks Graeme for posting that from the FT BA forum
Looks like their has been a lot of scare chatter that has escalted from very little (if any) credible source
- Rashad says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 11:21
  
  Hi Claz
  
  have i got above right that you can manage your Qatar booking in BA Manage my booking page?
  
  I have just tried to add mine there and it would not work saying “Sorry, we are unable to add bookings that do not contain any British Airways flights to your account.”
  Thank you
  - Rob says:
    
    3 Nov3 November 11:25
    
    No. You can manage a BA flight in Qatar MMB and do stuff BA.com does not allow.
    - Rashad says:
      
      3 Nov3 November 11:45
      
      thank you Rob, that makes sence
    - James says:
      
      4 Nov4 November 07:17
      
      Hi Rob, what can you do with a BA flight booking on QR’s website that you can’t on BA’s.
      
      Incidently I think that the change BA seemed to have made was a genuine change but that the backlash caused them to backtrack.
      - Rob says:
        
        4 Nov4 November 07:22
        
        Change the frequent flyer number, for a start.
  - Calz says:
    
    3 Nov3 November 12:30
    
    Hi Rashad,
    If you go to the Ba home page, select the manage my booking tab and enter your booking ref and surname you will be able to see details of your booking (guessing as long as the BA exec no. is attached to this booking). You can’t actually make any amendments to your booking this way but when I do this, I see all the flights that I have booked, my exec no., TP and Avios to be earned. You cannot add this booking to your BA account though
- Rob says:
  
  3 Nov3 November 11:28
  
  Apart from ba.com announcing it and BA confirming it on social media 🙂
  - Calz says:
    
    3 Nov3 November 12:35
    
    I never trust twitter Rob and FT can get very muddled 🙂
    HFP remains my favourite site for feeding my travel hobby