Qatar Airways Reverses Restriction—You Can Again Use Credit Card Points To Book Flights For Friends & Family

Qatar Airways has eliminated its most draconian restriction on booking awards with your points for friends and family. They were requiring you to first credit a flight to your account before doing this. You couldn’t just transfer in points from a credit card program and redeem for a spouse. Fortunately, after about three months, that’s now gone. Back in June, Qatar imposed new restrictions on who can travel using your Avios. Instead of being able to redeem for nearly anyone, an award can only be issued for: The account holder Up to four existing adult Privilege Club members added to “My List” Up to six people enrolled in a Family & Friends group Members added to either group are generally locked in for six months. (Gold and Platinum members are exempt from the ordinary nominee limitation, booking over the phone). The Family & Friends program also pools those members’ future Avios into the main member’s account. “My List” is for adults who already have their own Qatar accounts. The challenge was that in order to use these lists, the account had to be at least 30 days old and must have completed one of two qualifying activities: Credit a flown Qatar Airways or partner-airline flight to Privilege Club. Complete an eligible Qatar Airways co-branded credit card accrual transaction. Transferring points from Bilt, American Express, Chase, Citi or another Avios program didn’t count. Qatar would happily accept a large transferred balance but that didn’t let you redeem those Avios for your spouse. The good news is that people had success today adding nominees to My List and their Friends & Family Group without qualifying account activity, and Qatar confirmed to MilesTalk that “the restriction has been revised effective from 14Sep and now you can be able to invite or add family members in your account.” Reversing course here, and within a few months, is fantastic progress for the program. Topics on this page