Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

A new Qatar Airways flight discount code is launched

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Qatar Airways has launched a 15% discount code on the base fare, valid in Economy and Business, for flights from the UK on four new routes:

  • Canberra
  • Chiang Mai
  • Pattaya
  • Penang

The promo code to use on the Qatar Airways website here is FLYQRUK.  You need to book by 17th February for travel by any point until 1st February 2019.  “Peak black out travel dates apply.”

Qatar Airways discount code

Meanwhile, if you can connect to Dublin easily, you can save 15% on Chiang Mai, Penang, Canberra, Bangkok, Sydney, Bali, Perth, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Auckland, Cape Town, Singapore, Johannesburg, Lahore and Hong Kong.

The code you need for Dublin departures is IEFLYQR.  The same travel dates apply as for the UK offer.

Your best option to maximise your miles when paying is American Express Preferred Rewards Gold.  This offers double points – 2 per £1 – when you when you book flight tickets directly with an airline.  Our review of Amex Gold is here.


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

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

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

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

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:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

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:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express card

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

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.)

Comments (146)

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

  • G says:

    Not sure if this is know, but I have used my Curve Debit Card linked to my Tesco Debit Card to pay off my Amex balance and managed to get clubcard points on Tesco Debit Card. When paying directly with the Tesco Debit Card this would not be the case

    • John says:

      …. did paying Amex not work when you linked a credit card to Curve then?

      • G says:

        I don’t have a non Amex credit card so could not try. I was happy enough with 0.3 Avios per £

      • New Card says:

        I thought Curve blocked payments to Financial Institutions…….?

        • Alan says:

          I’m not sure if that’s just if the underlying card is a credit card rather than a debit card?

        • Mr Dee says:

          Would be interesting if this could be clarified as missing out on a good few points otherwise

    • Chris says:

      Interesting.. I will have to get myself a curve card for this purpose alone

  • Dean Selway says:

    I managed to put through £400 on self assessment in £200 transactions but now trying to pay corporation tax, I managed to put through £75 but no joy on anything more, just a payment declined notice, I’ve spoken to curve, HMRC and ihg no blocks on my card.

    Any advice?

    • Rob says:

      Go and use the card in some shops for offline transactions for a few weeks then try again.

      • Dean Selway says:

        It wouldn’t let me do a transaction higher than £200 initially then it would only let me do £75, tried on my partners curve today and no issues.

    • Mr Dee says:

      Why only £75 and was this the only payment you have made to your corporation tax?

  • John B says:

    OT – Anyone found a decent replacement for the now switched off MyFlights app?

    • Geoff says:

      Checkmytrip is the best replacement i have found for MyFlights – would also be interested to know if anyone has found anything better.

      • BlueHorizonUK says:

        I use Kayak, not a single email has tripped up the system yet whereas I find with TripIt it just goes into unfilled and you have to manually input everything. With Kayak if they don’t recognise what you’ve sent it comes back a little later all done and imported correctly with no interaction from me.

  • Boi says:

    IF BA decide to use these slots for RSA what time periods are we talking about?
    Here’s to hoping new redemption slots will become available soon….

    • Rob says:

      Slot becomes free from 20th April and under ‘use it or lose it’ rules it needs to be used for 80% of the season (which starts end of March). BA has little choice but to get a plane in the slot – any plane, any route – pretty soon after that. It simply does not have a spare long-haul aircraft though, in fact BA is short due to 787s out for engineering which is why the Doha flight is pretty much permanently cancelled these days.

      • john says:

        Some of the 747’s have ‘missed’ their retirement dates and look to still be going until the end of the year now, presumably to offer cover for some of the 787s. There are 8x new 787’s due this year but they may already be planned in to services.

  • rams1981 says:

    OT asked late yesterday but in case missed – has anyone had luck booking the 5 night Marriott travel package? If so how did you do it?

    7 nights is too long for a trip I have coming up so be good to do 5 nights and save the points.

    • Rob says:

      It seems that, after an initial burst on publicity last year about the call centre allowing this, there was a clampdown. It isn’t meant to be possible unless you own a Marriott timeshare.

      • rams1981 says:

        For 7 Day certificate, at 330k Marriott points (110k SPG) plus 120k Avios and given the hotel cost of roughly £1050….. got to pull the trigger. That’s decent value isn’t it?

  • Will says:

    Quick dumb question on Curve.

    If I put my debit card on there, I won’t pay anything for atm fees? I take it the pay ones at 7/11s are a different ball game but normal banks fine?

    • Rob says:

      Correct.

    • Genghis says:

      There are still limits though aren’t there?

      From the FUP
      “ATM usage is free for up to 10 domestic (withdrawals in the same currency as your Funding Source) withdrawals per calendar month after which time you may be charged £0.50 (or currency equivalent) per usage for each additional ATM withdrawal.”

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    OT (but this is the bits section) you may have heard yesterday that Virgin Trains East Coast has got into more trouble and may be giving up the franchise within months.

    I’ve written about the consequences here: http://saveecrewards.co.uk/blog/future-vtec

    Most important thing to remember (if you can’t remember the previous east coast failures) is that for the passenger it’s business as usual. If the operator of the franchise changes tickets will still be valid and the current timetable will operate. Vouchers issued by VTEC will continue to be valid until expiry. So don’t worry about buying VTEC only tickets, whoever is running the line at the time of your trip is obliged to accept them.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      Oh yeah and a bunch of people have already asked on Twitter if that means we’ll not be getting the Azuma trains. They’re still going ahead as planned. They were ordered and specified by the government, whoever operates the ECML has to use them. However, they may not be called Azuma as Virgin own the brand, their official name is class 800 (or GWR call them InterCity Express Train).

      Trains aren’t usually owned by the operator directly, they are leased so when a franchise changes hands the trains remain.

      • KP says:

        As a frequent traveller on the leeds-kgx line, thanks for the info!

      • Gavin says:

        Yes you’re definitely getting the class 800 trains, we are making them as quick as we can!

    • Lumma says:

      When you were talking about the Virgin red discounts yesterday I’ve noticed another thing that’s changed, I can no longer get the discount on trains to Sunderland unless it’s the one train per day that goes there. Now have to book to Newcastle and pay for the metro separately.

      • Save East Coast Rewards says:

        Did this change happen recently or when they changed the booking engine in August? Officially the rule was the journey had to be 100% operated by VTEC, but often there’s been bugs where the discount has also worked for tickets that include connections. The old booking engine had some bugs like that and I’m not sure about the new one but it did have its fair share of bugs so it wouldn’t surprise me that it allowed the discount with a connection in the past.

        • Lumma says:

          The last booking that I got the connection on was booked back in July last year. It really confused me last night as to why the discounts weren’t showing as the booking I was trying to make wasn’t in the exclusion dates.

          Probably just going to push me more to booking with Grand Central instead. Especially as they seem to always send a 20% off my next journey code when booking direct. Their 1st class is not worth the money though

  • Briandt says:

    And another dumb question…what really are the Curve benefits of getting my card changed to Debit ?

    • Rob says:

      You can use it as places that accept debit cards but not credit cards.

      The older Curve Cards are technically pre-paid Mastercards and will be rejected at places which only accept debit cards.

      • Pangolin says:

        But are the fees abroad (i.e. for the self-employed version) exactly the same? I only pay 1% for FX transactions on the current (non-debit) card, so it’s worthwhile for me.

        If the debit card version had higher FX costs I definitely wouldn’t switch.

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