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Qatar Airways offering full refunds on flights booked now for 2021

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Qatar Airways has made a VERY aggressive move to capture your business for 2021.

It will offer unlimited date changes and full refunds, no questions asked for all tickets issued before 30th April 2021. Travel must be booked for completion by 31st December 2021.

qatar airways refund guarantee

Full refunds are available regardless of whether your flight has been cancelled or not. This is extremely attractive and makes every ticket fully flexible.

Date and destination changes are offered in the same booking class and you do still have to pay any difference in fare or taxes, so it’s not a complete slam dunk. However, if the cost of changing is too high, simply take the full refund and book elsewhere.

Whilst Qatar Airways initially attracted some criticism at the beginning of the pandemic for making refunds difficult, the airline claims that it is now processing refunds within 30 days and has paid out over £92m to UK passengers since March.

You can see all your options (you can also choose a voucher with 10% value uplift instead of a refund) on the Qatar Airways ‘Travel with Confidence’ page here.

Comments (93)

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  • Aston100 says:

    Does anyone have an alternative contact number for QR?
    The one on the website has a message (In English plus various south asian languages) about all lines busy.
    Was this way yesterday too.
    0330 024 0125

    • GT says:

      I managed to get through on this number yesterday. It took about 6 attempts – being cut off after about 30sec each time. But eventually got through and got a cancellation and full refund agreed very quickly. Confirmation email arrived 2 hrs later.

  • Benilyn says:

    Rob as others mentioned here the extended voucher to Aug-21 (intentionally or not) is a stay by voucher to Aug-21, versus for us UK folks typically being a book by.

    As someone else mentioned the other day, wonder if this was done by mistake and just copied the US rules where they are typically a stay by date. Is this something you could ask IHG for us?

    • Briaann says:

      Yeah my new voucher is definitely a stay by date as well.. Done a few dummy bookings to test it. The original voucher was a book by. Would be good if HfP could possibly ask ihg about this? Thanks

  • Mick says:

    Not sure where to post this Rob, but how about an article regarding which EU countries have banned us from entering due to the New Covid strain and which we can travel to? Thanks

  • Lostantipod says:

    Annoyed at this move by IHG . I burned my free night recently on a hotel in London that I would have otherwise paid cash for, had I known.
    On Qatar – I can confirm that while the call centre staff are not especially helpful or experienced, I rang late last week to cancel my flights and my credit card shows the refund today.

  • R C says:

    OT – Supposed to travel JNB to LHR on the 26th with Virgin but they canceled the flight last night as a result of the UK banning direct flights from SA to the UK. I managed to speak to Virgin last night but the agent couldn’t rebook us with another carrier and said we would need to wait for a repatriation flight. I’m finding it hard to believe that is our only option given there are lots of indirect options to fly to the UK with other carriers.

    We’ve been in SA for 3 weeks and are ready to go home so we don’t really want to sit around waiting for a repatriation flight especially with the threat of another lockdown looming here.

    I’ve been on hold for over 2 hours today and not sure what to do if Virgin won’t help. Does anyone have any advice on what to do in this situation? Would booking with another carrier and trying to claim back from Virgin be an option if they refuse to rebook us? Tickets were booked for £999 Upper Class return in the recent virgin sale so taking a refund and paying last minute one way to fly with someone else seems bad value if we have the option to get rebooked on any other indirect routing.

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