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I posted a few days ago about the current Qatar Airways sale and included some of the bargains available:
- Berlin to Singapore – £897
- Oslo to Auckland – £1,485
- Stockholm to Krabi – £1,121
- Oslo to Maldives – £1,248
- Helsinki to Krabi – £1,107
- Helsinki to Dubai – £833
- Frankfurt to Windhoek – £1,000
- Berlin to Kuala Lumpur – £1,137
- Berlin to Cape Town – £1,152
- Berlin to Melbourne – £1,780
The good people posting on Flyertalk have unearthed another cracking fare – and it’s the best yet:
Sofia to Phuket for just ~£745!
Remember that you have to use the code MASTERCARD on the Qatar site to find the lowest fares.
Availability looks great right through the booking period – mid August 2017 to mid March 2018 (EDIT: Thanks to James in the comments for pointing out that the prices ITA MAtrix is showing for Dec/Jan/Feb might not be available to book on the Qatar site. I’m still seeing fares for a little over £900 for those dates, so YMMV).
I don’t live in Sofia…
True – but it’s very cheap and easy to get to these days. It’s also well worth a quick look at the city if you are passing through and hotels etc are good value.
Craig has written a great piece on ‘positioning’ to take advantage of cheap fares, what the possible pitfalls are and how to avoid them.
Anything else?
Remember that you can earn ~ 13,000 Avios and (almost) qualify for British Airways Silver status by crediting these flights to British Airways Executive Club. We covered this in detail for the last sale – have a read because all the essential elements are the same even if the specific examples are different.
Qatar has also recently introduced a free stopover service including a night in Doha at a 4*-5* hotel.
Bottom line
It’s certainly not the most convenient routing, but the price is amazing!
Sofia’s main travel hacking claim to fame is that it is EXACTLY 2,000 miles from Doha.
Which means 140 Tier Points in Business for paid fares, but also means that it sneaks into Zone 3 and should only cost 20,000 Avios for a Business Class reward (to/from Doha)
Of course the positioning flight is rather long, but if you do it as a TP run you should get 80 TPs for Club Europe each way…
Nice info!
Thats dangerous. What if somebody from aerclub gets hired to Avios and they manage to move sofia a few miles east?!
Don’s see any anywhere near that in Dec, Jan or Feb so not availability all the way from Aug 17 to Mar 18.
ITA shows similar but not available on QR website as far asci can tell 🙁
Cheers. Interesting, I did have a look at quite a few dates before posting and ITA seemed to match up with the Qatar site. Will amend – thanks!
Wow, you learn something new everyday. Qatar fly from Sofia…
Yes, it’s a good one to keep an eye on – lots of good Qatar fares, well served by the LCCs, good value hotels, etc
I’m all for positioning flights. But Sofia is like a third of the way there. Personally I”d rather pay a bit extra and have a shorter shorthaul positioning flight.
Agreed – it’s definitely stretching it a bit. That said, ease and cost of positioning are probably bigger factors than an extra hour or so actually in the air (when flying within Europe, it’s usually all the stuff on both sides of the actual flight that soaks up all the time). The fact you can regularly fly to Sofia for very little money from a range of regional airports means there isn’t all that much difference to me personally (Yorkshire based) between Sofia and flying from Heathrow. Many of the cheapest flights are very early morning or late evening ones too which can sometimes be annoying, but could work out quite well if you were just positioning. Obviously, 3-4 star hotels for £30-40 and 5*s for under £100 doesn’t hurt either!