✈️ How to find and book Qatar Qsuites

Estimated read time: 5 minutes and 12 seconds

Good morning from the lovely █████ ████████ Lounge at Boston Logan Airport! I can’t say the name of the lounge, but it rhymes with “Face Laugh-Fire” Lounge, and it looks like this…

I’ve been meaning to check out this lounge ever since it opened earlier this year, and it’s pretty fantastic! As a reminder, you can access this lounge by holding the [[ chase-sapphire-reserve.name ]] OR once for free every year via Priority Pass.

But this lounge is pathetic in comparison to what I’m about to teach you today:

• ✈️ How to book Qatar Airways QSuites

✈️ How to book Qatar Airways QSuites

So earlier today, I booked an exciting flight. It’s a flight that many of you have booked and one that many MORE of you have probably wanted to book.

I’m talking about Qatar Airways’ famous “QSuite” business class.

Here’s why people care about this.

Qatar Airways is considered by many (myself included) to be one of the best (if not the single best) airlines in the world. And although QSuites are technically a business-class product, they feel more like first-class.

With lie-flat beds, world-class service, and private pods with closing doors, you will feel like you’re flying first class while only having to pay the price of business.

And today, my friends, I’ll walk you through exactly how to book this seat. It’s so simple that any dumb dumb can do it (even a dumb dumb like me).

Here is what we’ll cover:

• Step 1: Find availability

• Step 2: Is it actually a Qsuite?

• Step 3: Transfer points and book

• Tips and other thoughts

Step 1: Finding availability

The hardest part of this process is finding availability in the first place. Qatar business-class awards (especially good ones like QSuites) are notoriously difficult to find.

Thankfully, there are a few shortcuts you can take.

The first is using a website called seats.aero. This is an AWESOME site that has a dedicated tool specifically for finding QSuite availability.

If you click “tools” at the top and select “Qatar QSuite Finder,” you’ll come to a page where you can select your regions, search for a specific airport, and see results that look like this:

This page will tell you which dates and routes have QSuite flights, which programs you can book them with, and how many points it will cost you in that program.

The catch here is that you can only see two months of availability unless you pay for a membership… Still, if you have your heart set on QSuites, a monthly membership might pay for itself pretty quickly.

Another solid way to find Qatar business awards is through American Airlines. Since they have an award calendar, it makes it super easy to view dates one month at a time.

On the AA website, simply search for your Qatar Airways route (you’ll want to have a specific route in mind like Doha to New York, Chicago, Boston, etc.).

Personally, I’m looking to connect in Doha and fly nonstop to Montreal in QSuites.

On the results page, select “Calendar.”

From here, make sure you filter the results to be business or first class.

The resulting view will show you an entire calendar month of potential award availability in business class for your desired route. 👇

As you can see, there is a lot of availability for my proposed flight from Doha to Montreal.

So at this point, we know which dates and routes have business-class availability on Qatar Airways.

But now we get to the most important step of the whole process…

Step 2: How do I know if a flight has QSuites?

Another major issue with booking these seats is that only a handful of Qatar’s planes have QSuites.

Don’t get me wrong, any business-class seat on Qatar is great. But QSuites is in a league of its own.

Thankfully, it’s VERY easy to get this information.

My go-to method is simply to go on Google Flights and search for the route that I found availability for in the previous step.

When you find the exact flight that you’re hoping to book with points, click the little drop-down arrow to get more information about your flight, plane type, etc.

The resulting page will have a little icon on the right-hand side that describes the type of seat. If it says “lie-flat bed,” it’s just a normal business-class seat.

If it says “individual suite” (like in the image below), you know it’s a QSuite.

Boom. So let’s take a look at what we’ve figured out so far:

• ✅ Which route we want to fly

• ✅ Which dates have business-class availability for that route

• ✅ Which of those planes have QSuites on them

And now we get to the fun part…

Step 3: Transfer points and book your flight

Even though we used tools like American Airlines and Seats.aero in step 1, we don’t need to use any of those programs to actually book the flight…

In fact, I love using Qatar’s own points program: Avios.

Avios are one of the most flexible currencies in the travel hacking world since you can freely transfer them between British Airways, Qatar, Iberia, and Aer Lingus.

That means as long as you have one of those airlines as a transfer partner from your bank, you can turn them into Qatar Avios.

A few months ago, I transferred some points from the [[ the-platinum-card-from-american-express.name ]] to British Airways for a flight that I ended up canceling.

Thankfully, I was able to instantly transfer those points from British Airways over to Qatar as I just mentioned.

From here, I simply ran a search for the itinerary I needed to book. Although the QSuite flight I wanted was from Doha to Montreal, my point of origin is actually Colombo, Sri Lanka.

I don’t care about how I fly the first leg, but as luck would have it, there was also business availability on the first leg from Colombo to Doha, connecting to the epic QSuite flight to Montreal.

As a side note, I specifically chose a flight with a long connection.

Doha is a fun city with hundreds of fantastic (and cheap) hotel options, and the airport is so close to the city center that I always enjoy a 24-hour layover.

Congratulations. 🥳 You are now booked on a QSuite flight. But before you ride off into the Qatari sunset, here are a few more quick points to keep in mind:

• It helps to have flexibility. These seats can be hard to find, and the odds of finding business availability on a plane with QSuites on an exact date is extremely rare…

• Book immediately. Qatar has very reasonable change/cancellation policies. Given how hard it is to find these awards, I’d encourage you to snag it while you can, and think about it later.

And one final note…

Even if you do all of this work, there is still no guarantee that you’ll fly in a QSuite… Much of Qatar’s fleet is interchangeable.

So even if you’re scheduled to fly on a 777-300ER that DOES have QSuites, there’s always a chance that the plane could be swapped with a different 777-300ER that DOESN’T have QSuites.

In fact, this exact thing happened to me last year. 😭 I was booked on a QSuites flight, but at the last minute, my plane was swapped out.

But here’s the thing:

Qatar is amazing… no matter which plane you fly on, you’re going to have an incredible, world-class experience. 

So in my opinion, this isn’t a dealbreaker.

But if you’re shelling out ALL of your points because you want this one specific experience in a QSuite, just be aware of the risks.

And with that, my friends, I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the day to process all of this.

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Wow, that was a doozy, huh? I know a lot of you have asked about this famous business class seat, and I hope today’s newsletter gave you some insight into how to approach booking it.

If you end up booking a QSuite, please let me know - I’d love to hear all about how your experience was and where you’re heading. So let me know by replying to this email or reaching out on the social medias.

Take care and have a wonderful rest of your day,

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