I’m based in DFW, so I tend to fly American Airlines by default. When I have a healthy amount of AA miles to spend, I love redeeming them with Qatar Airways for their business class cabin, Q-Suites. I’ve been lucky enough to experience the actual Q-Suites for 3 long haul flight segments (all on miles) and it’s definitely worth all the hype! My most recent flight in Q-Suites was from Doha to Dallas (on my way back from the Maldives), so I can show you how to use AA miles to book Qatar Airway’s Q-suites.
How Many Points Needed
Redeeming points is easy once you have enough points for the spend. The hard part is finding award space to book, so you will have to either be flexible with your dates and/or get creative with your routing.
American Airlines categorizes Doha (and the Maldives) as the Middle East region. If you can book award space in Q-Suites/business class, it will cost 70,000 miles one-way. In main cabin, it will cost 40,000 miles one-way.
Search For Award Space with American Airlines
Go to American Airlines’ website and put in your starting city, destination city, date, and check “Redeem Miles.” For this example, I’m booking US to the Middle East, specifically Dallas to the Maldives (MLE). I’m booking a one-way flight in this post as it’s easier to show, but you can book a roundtrip as well. If you can find award seats, one-way business cabin is 70,000 AA miles and roundtrip is 140,000 AA miles.
Go to the Calendar tab and make sure you’re searching Business/First class flights. This shows all the dates with available business cabin seats.
You’ll want to make sure you’re booking flights operated by Qatar Airways. For the Maldives, you can fly in Q-Suites for 70,000 AA miles and $19.30 in taxes.
However, not all of these are Qatar Airway’s Q-suites and I’ll show you what I mean.
Example Flight 1:
For this particular DFW-MLE flight on October 7th, it’s still 70,000 miles with $401.50 in taxes. The last leg of the flight is operated by British Airways, and they are notorious for having high fuel surcharges on award flights. You’ll want to avoid them when possible, unless you don’t care about paying high taxes.
In another post, I can show you how to efficiently use British Airways miles and not pay hundreds in taxes.
Award Space- Phantom Availability
Sometimes when I trying to book an award flight, AA will give me an error messages like such:
So just be aware that sometimes these can be phantom award space. To double check availability, I like to cross check business cabin seating with British Airways. In order to search award seats with British Airways, you will need to have a British Airways account.
Ready to Book
American Airlines will allow you to hold any award seat for up to 5 days from the day you placed it on hold. AA will automatically have you place the award flights on hold when you don’t have enough miles. This will give you the time to transfer, buy, or earn enough miles to book.
Then when you’re ready to book, go to “Manage Trip” and click “Pay for Trip”
If you don’t pay for your trip by the hold date, the reservation will automatically be cancelled.
If you decide to cancel your trip after confirming/booking it, you will get the miles fully refunded back to your account free of charge.
Q-Suites Seating
When using AA miles to book flights on Qatar Airways (or any partner airlines), you won’t be able to see the seating chart or pick your seat directly with American Airlines because it’s not on their airplane.
I like to use Expert Flyer to confirm the types of seats (Q-suites) and its availability in live time. You do need to create an account to use Expert Flyer and it’s free.
When looking at the seat map for your exact flight, you can confirm if the seat configuration is Q-Suites. In this case, the business class cabin for this flight are Q-Suites and you can see which seats are still available.
To choose your seat, you will need to visit Qatar Airways’ website, go to the My Trip tab, enter in your details, and choose your seat. If you’re unable to reserve a seat online, you can call Qatar Airway’s Customer Support Center and they can easily assist you. You’ll want to check the seat availability with Expert Flyer before calling Customer Support to reserve your seat (that just saves time on the phone).
How To Earn AA Miles
+ Fly with American Airlines or partner airlines and credit flight miles to your American Airlines account.
+ Hold and spend on AA credit cards, such as the AAdvantage Aviator Red Mastercard. You can read my post on all the travel credit cards that I keep.
+ Transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to AA miles. It’s not the best solution because it’s 3 Marriott Bonvoy Points to 1 AA mile (3:1). Marriott is a transfer partner of Chase, so you can transfer Chase Ultimate Reward points to Marriott Bonvoy, and then transfer to AA miles. Again, transferring Marriott points to AA miles isn’t ideal, but it’s an option.
I love talking miles and points and sharing this hobby. There are a lot of resources out there that can teach you how to book with other airlines and using other airline miles and/or transferrable points. If you have any specific questions, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions or direct you to more resources.
Happy Travels!
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