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The intricacies of why and when (and where…) airline loyalty programmes release reward space is one of the universe’s great mysteries. As a traveller, this can be enormously frustrating if you want to use your hard-earned miles to actually book something.

Discussing the full range of peculiarities (even just the ones I’ve personally noticed) would take all day, but there are occasions where you can use the oddness to your advantage. One you might find particularly helpful involves the relationship between British Airways Executive Club (BAEC) and Qatar Airways Privilege Club (QAPC).

What’s the deal?

Ok, so you probably know that BAEC and QAPC both use Avios these days. You also might know that you can transfer Avios between the two programmes freely and instantly.

In a logical world, it would therefore be fairly reasonable to assume that reward space with one programme would mirror the other. Or, at least, that if availability did differ, BAEC would offer more British Airways redemption options and QAPC more Qatar Airways redemption options.

This is the world of airline loyalty programmes though, so that assumption would be wrong.

In fact, British Airways routinely offers more (or at least different) reward space availability to its airline partners than it does through BAEC to its own members.

Historically, this meant that if you were lucky enough to have a chunk of say Alaska Mileage Plan or American AAdvantage miles, you could sometimes book BA flights even when BAEC members could not redeem their Avios.

Now that Qatar Airways also uses Avios (and you can transfer to/from BA whenever you like), it is sometimes possible to use your Avios to book tickets with BA even when you can’t find any availability through BAEC.

I still don’t really know what you’re going on about…

Here’s an example – at the time of writing, if you wanted to book two BA Business Class tickets from Sao Paulo to London Heathrow on 21st January 2025, you can’t. Only one ticket is available:

Head over to the Qatar Airways website instead though, and there are two Avios tickets available in Business Class on that same flight:

All you would have to do is transfer your Avios over and book. In this example, the cost per person happens to be the same too, although that can vary.

Searching using the Qatar Airways website is horrible and takes ages though?

I know – I probably wouldn’t have bothered writing this post if that was your only option. That’s how bad it is. I can only assume the website was put together by the same people responsible for the Iberia site and, well, that is not a compliment.

The good news is that there is a much better alternative for actually tracking down the reward space you need – use the Alaska site instead. The search tool is delightfully simple and will show you a whole month of options at a time (if you click on “Flexible Dates” after your first search).

You don’t even need to have an account or sign in.

If you’re not keen on the Alaska search tool, the American Airlines site isn’t too bad either. Regardless, once you’ve found the BA availability you want on the Alaska or AA site, log in to your Qatar Airways account and see if you can find it there as well. I’ve done a lot of tests and it has always worked, but because airline programmes are weird, I can’t promise it will always match up 100%.

If the availability is there on Qatar Airways and you’re happy with the price, transfer your Avios over from BAEC and book!

Watch out: When I said the Qatar Airways search tool is bad, I meant it. For example, using the same flight details as above, it still won’t find the availability if you put SAO (the code for all Sao Paulo area airports) into the search rather than GRU (the specific airline code for Sao Paulo Guarulhos International Airport). You will get a load of overpriced ‘Flexi’ options for Qatar Airways flights instead:

Be as specific as possible when you search.

Bottom line

If you are prepared to spend an extra few minutes looking for BA reward space in more than one place, you might well be able to use your Avios for that perfect redemption. Even when it initially looks like you won’t.

Have you noticed any other Avios availability ‘quirks’? – Let me know in the comments below!