For those of us who registered for Hilton’s Qatar Airways promotion, the 750 bonus Avios has finally posted.
In the meantime, Qatar Airways has announced enhanced partnership with China’s Xiamen Airlines. The partnership has actually been around for a while and some Xiamen codeshare flights were available for redemption using Avios. With the new ties however we’d see more codeshare opportunities and reciprocal program benefits between the two airlines.
In fact, you can already book Xiamen Airlines flights using Avios on Qatar’s website. Here are some pricing examples for one-way in economy, compared to what Virgin Atlantic charges:
- Beijing – Shanghai: 12,000 + 122 CNY / 7,000 + 50 CNY
- Fuzhou – Urumqi: 18,000 + 122 CNY / 11,500 + 50 CNY
- Xiamen – Taipei: 9,000 + 340 CNY / 5,500 + 384 CNY
- Xiamen – Seoul: 12,000 + 369 CNY / 10,000 + 439 CNY
- Xiamen – Osaka: 15,000 + 369 CNY / 10,000 + 419 CNY
Virgin seems to be winning in all cases, but the Qatar option could still be useful if you are more of an Avios collector. Note that I’ve almost never seen any business class availability from Xiamen Airlines, except for the two codeshare routes:
- Xiamen – Doha: 60,000 + 960 CNY
- Beijing – Doha: 50,000 + 960 CNY
An unspoken perk: if you are lucky enough to be on Xiamen’s 787-8 aircraft, the Avios ticket is actually booked into their First Class.
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