New flight deals are great, but it’s the ones you can find with ease at a great price, on an even better airline and even even better seat that are sometimes the best solution. That’s especially true when that airline is Qatar, the seat is the Qsuite and the glory days of earning tons of points in the Oneworld alliance while enjoying extreme comfort may be numbered. Qatar has brought back one of their better deals from Europe to Asia, with round trip flights to Singapore, Bangkok or Shanghai in business class from just £1175. These deals are wide open too…
The Qatar Deals To Asia
Qatar Airways revolutionised business class last year with the introduction of Qsuites, a new private suite with a door in business class. It’s every single bit as nice as it sounds, and you can preview the experience here. The airline has pledged to make Singapore Changi one of its Qsuites destinations and currently flies the beautiful Airbus A350-1000 and A350-900 aircraft, which both help to reduce jet lag via better cabin pressure, light and reduced noise.
Right now there are deals from…
£1215 Stockholm to Singapore (Book Here).
£1174 Belgrade to Shanghai (Book Here).
£1275 Gothenburg to Bangkok (Book Here).
These deals are wide open all year, even for very short trips from just £1175 ($1530) or lower, which is around 15,000 SEK round trip. You’ll most likely get the classic Qatar business class seat on the flight from Stockholm or Gothenburg, which you can check out here, but for the onward flight from Doha to Singapore, Shanghai or Bangkok you should be looking at Qsuites both ways.
Qatar is known for aircraft swaps which can work in your favour or against you. With that said, you can use ExpertFlyer’s free seat tool to look for a seat map like the one below. If you find a map like the below for any of your flights, you have Qsuites. If you don’t, it’ll be something like this, but could always get upgraded. FYI, Doha is a lounge worth spending some time in.
Side Note: Qatar says it will review its place in the Oneworld alliance in two months time. Any bookings made prior to this announcement should absolutely still be eligible for Oneworld flight credit and any flown before the announcement will obviously be business as usual whatever the result. It’s more than likely that Qatar will stay in Oneworld.
The Asia Travel Deal Dates
Flight deals which are wide open, easily booked and don’t require two passengers or a long stay are lovely. This is one of them. You can jet off as soon as March 13th for travel until February 2020. April is the only month mostly blacked out, as is the second half of December. For most dates, you’ll need to stay at least three nights, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem. These are awesome cities and each offer some of the best onward connection opportunities to Southeast Asia and beyond.
How To Book Qsuites Business
Booking direct with Qatar is always the way to go. Book here. Simply enter ARN-SIN, BEG-PVG or GOT-BKK as your departure and destination points. Once you get results, you’ll be able to see a 7 day calendar of the lowest fares automatically, and can even click a 15 day calendar to make sure you find the correct price, which will appear as something around 15,000 SEK. Enjoy your trip.
Not sure how you can say bookings made before a possible departure from OW would still earn miles/status credit in other OW partner programs unless there is wording in the OW partnership contract that guarantees this. If QR does leave the alliance it could still have FF program partnerships with those OW airlines in which it holds equity (BA, IB and CX) but I can’t recall such grandfathering of credits when CO left SkyTeam to join STAR and merge with UA, or similarly when US left STAR to merge with AA. And we’ve seem many hotels that deflag from chains not honour points/stay credits and even award nights.
I hope this grandfatherin* would be the case as I have a QR booking for October that I want to credit to BA, but I can only put my expectations that given QR’s small interest in BA’s parent company, it will maintain a commercial relationship with BA and I can credit those flights to my Exec Club account for both Avios and tier points.
Booked on their deal from MXP to Bangkok. Initially Doha to Bangkok and return was on Qsuite and they have equipment 3 times since my booking and changed it all to old style 777 business class. Really bad from Qatar. I am planning to complain heavily to them
i have had the exact same problem, ARL-BKK changed to old style 777, they denied it initially and refused to change flights, i had taken screen grabs of the seat maps for the Qsuite flights. They do have 787’s and A380’s on the DOH-BKK though so have managed to change to those after numerous calls, but only booked these flights for the Qsuite so am very frustrated, their customer service was awful.