Qatar Airways reduces QSuite count on upcoming A350s

Qatar Airways’s latest A350-1000 long-haul aircraft will have just 24 of its distinctive QSuite business class seats, as opposed to the 46 QSuites the airline now has on its A350-1000 fleet.

The next A350s will have four Qsuites in a 1-2-1 configuration in 6 rows. Qatar Airways will increase the number of seats in the economy cabin to 371 in the future with the extra space.

From 1 August Doha to Denpasar (Bali)-will be the first route to include Qatar Airways’ most recent A350-1000 configuration, according to data from flight schedules.

There are currently 19 A350-1000s in Qatar Airways’ fleet, and they have 23 more on order.

It’s very interesting that they are reducing business class seats when the consensus is that business class has more leisure demand than pre-Covid. With prices already extremely high, having less capacity in business class is not going to help. However if these are all on predominantly leisure routes like Bali where there is lower demand overall for business class it probably will have less impact.

Buy or gift Avios & enjoy 50% more

For a limited time only, you can enjoy 50% more Avios. All you need to do is complete your purchase between 7 and 11 May 2023.

It’s very easy to transfer instantly between Qatar and BA once you link accounts. However some people have reported issues so if you haven’t tried to transfer already, you may wish to try before you buy Avios.

The maximum you can buy is 250,000 Avios.

You can buy the Avios here.

IHG Rewards Credit Card

I reported recently that IHG are going to cancel their credit cards for the UK with Creation and so far it does not look likely that there will be another company taking it over any time soon.

However the good news is that several people have reported receiving an email saying they will get extended benefits in recognition of their loyalty.

These include

• keeping current status until the end of 2023 and then Platinum until the end of 2024 for Premium cardholders and silver for the regular card.
• 4 x points on stays until end of 2023 for premium cards from 28 June and 2 x points for regular cards.