This topic was previously highlighted in my weekly recap newsletter here.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
In mid-June 2026, Qatar Airways added restrictions for booking award flights for others. Not only can you no longer book a flight for someone else, you can’t even book a flight for yourself and another for the same flight…unless they are a designated on what Qatar calls the Family & Friends list (allows miles pooling) or on My List (list of people you can book flights for without miles pooling). This new restriction applies for all award flights, not just flights on Qatar metal.
The biggest issue?
It’s not so easy adding people to either of those lists. Qatar Airways has added some unique requirements for someone to add people to their lists. The first one makes sense from a perspective of rewarding those who have a modicum of loyalty to Qatar Airways and requires you to have flown a cash flight with Qatar Airways or at least credit a partner airline flight to Qatar Airways. Ok, fine. You can credit a cheap AA flight to meet that requirement. You can also get around that by having a Qatar Airways co-branded credit card.
Another requirement that I can’t complain about is your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account needs to have been open for 30 days. And here is my reminder that you should open airline and hotel loyalty accounts, even for ones you don’t plan to use in the near-term, just in case something like this happens. Some important programs that currently have account age restrictions include Japan Airlines and Iberia.
The weird requirement. This one is quite bizarre and is a requirement for the Family & Friends list. The terms indicate for someone to join your Family & Friends list, they cannot be a Privilege Club Member. What??? So you can’t add someone to your list if they already have an account? That makes no real logical sense except for an extremely punitive measure to fight miles brokers joining the Family & Friends list (since it allows miles pooling).
Here is the summary of changes
- Qatar Airways requires additional travelers to be on “Family & Friends” or “My List” to book an award flight for them, even if traveling with you
- To add people to those lists, you need 1) account open 30+ days and 2) collected Avios by flowing on Qatar or a partner airline or using a co-branded Qatar Airways card
- “My List” allows you to add 4 Privilege Club members. Miles are not pooled
- “Family & Friends” lets you add 6 members and miles are pooled. These members need to have completely brand new accounts
Potential workarounds
Although I predict Qatar will tweak some of these restrictions, here are some workarounds and solutions to book Qatar Qsuites for two going forward.
- Credit a cash flight to Qatar to unlock the ability to add to your lists, it can be one of Qatar’s multiple oneworld or other partners including Alaska Airlines, American, JetBlue, LATAM, British Airways, etc. View the list of partners here on Qatar’s site.
- Get a Qatar co-branded credit card. In the US, there is a $99 annual fee one and a $499 annual fee one. The $499 annual fee one actually gives you oneworld Sapphire and Qatar Airways Gold status.
- Book Qatar award flights through partners like British Airways or Japan Airlines. However, British Airways has limitations including only being able to book 355 days out (vs. Qatar at 360 days) and not able to book certain routes like US-DOH-Africa or US-DOH-most of Asia or US-DOH-Oceania
- Book separate bookings with separate accounts. One person (P1) books their flight with their own Qatar frequent flyer account and the other person (P2) books the other ticket with their own account. If the points you plan to use are already in your Qatar Avios account (P1 account), you could potentially move those points to Finnair, then move them from your Finnair account to the other person’s Finnair account (P2 account) for a €10 fee. Then those Finnair Avios can be moved to P2’s Qatar account.
- Wait and hope they update some parts of the policy.
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