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Qatar threatens to leave Oneworld
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker has said in an interview again that Qatar may withdraw from Oneworld. This is bound to strike fear in the hearts of many of us BA Avios and tier point collectors. Qatar is one of the most useful airlines in Oneworld for me personally after BA. With low prices, a great business class product and 4 times the tier points than flying with BA, they are usually my first choice eastbound.
In the interview with FlightGlobal he said that Qatar Airways might withdraw from Oneworld due to the tactics of other alliance members, by which he basically means American Airlines.
“The whole idea behind an alliance is to work together to support each other like a family. But I don’t think that is any more the spirit of the alliance, especially since American Airlines is continuously targeting Qatar Airways, slandering Qatar Airways, giving misinformation to the US government about Qatar Airways,” Al Baker said.
American Airlines have always been critical of Qatar claiming that they have an unfair advantage with government subsidies. Al Baker stated that AA were interfering in their investment with Air Italy by claiming that Qatar are cheating the open skies agreement with their Air Italy flights to the US. Al Baker also went on to accuse Qantas of blocking Qatar’s expansion into Australia even though it currently has 42 flights a week there already.
So am I worried? Not at all currently. This is not the first time that Al Baker has made this type of remark and it is fairly typical posturing from the often outspoken CEO. Given the current blockade and recent losses it seems highly unlikely that Qatar would choose to leave a major alliance at this point.
BA increases Boston capacity
If you are looking for Boston Avios redemptions for next summer it will be worth having a look now as BA have boosted capacity on the route by increasing the number of A380 services for next summer. From 31 March 2019, the A380 aircraft is scheduled to operate 7 times a week, instead of 3.
The A380 schedule will now be:
BA213 LHR 1115 – 1335 BOS
BA212 BOS 1915 – 0650+1 LHR
The quickest way to search for redemptions and set up alerts is the third party website baredemptionfinder.com. The website allows you to search a whole year almost instantly for seats and you can set up free email alerts when new seats are released.
Kids Eat Free during school holidays at Heathrow
Did you know that children can eat free during school holiday periods at Heathrow? The dates where you can get free kids meals are:
- 18 October 2018 – 28 October 2018
- 6 December – 6 January 2019
- 7 February 2019 – 24 February 2019
There are also some decent restaurants included, not just the cheap ones:
Terminal 2
The Perfectionists’ Café (available all year)
Terminal 3
Terminal 4
Terminal 5
Huxleys (extended for Kids Fly Free from 1 June to 5 November 2018)
Carluccio’s (before security)
Gordon Ramsay Plane Food (available all year)
- Age limits:
- Children 12 years or younger at La Salle, Huxleys, Oriel, Ca’puccino, Gordon Ramsay Plane Food, The Commission
- Children 11 years or younger at Wondertree
- Children 10 years or younger at Bridge Bar, The Perfectionists’ Café, The Prince of Wales and Carluccio’s
- Minimum spend £9 (except The Commission where the minimum is £10.95)
You can read my review of Plane Food here.
You read the full details of the offer on the Heathrow website.
3 comments
The Qatar news is a week old.
Hi Michelle. The Qatar news was new to me anyway! If you’re still intending to try all the oneworld airlines over the next year, I’ll be really interested in your review of Royal Jordanian as an alternative to Qatar.
Hi Ross. Thanks. I don’t always cover things immediately but not everyone follows other blogs and news so hopefully it is useful to some people! Yes at the moment I am still planning to do every OW or at least try! RJ should be a fairly easy one to do. I have flown them before but it was a long time ago now.
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