Qatar Airways has had great award pricing for short-distance travel on American Airlines and Alaska Airlines. What’s more, their points are easy to come by.

• They have a U.S. credit card
• They are a transfer partner of American Express and Citibank
• You can move British Airways, Aer Lingus, Finnair and Iberia points into Qatar, meaning you can also move Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One and Bilt points into Qatar via this middleman – and there have been regular transfer bonuses to BA.

Unfortunately, as Dan’s Deals flags, Qatar has devalued these redemptions without notice.

American and Alaska have a separate award chart from other oneworld redemptions (and from Qatar’s own flights, as well as JetBlue). It’s unpublished. However these are the changes:

Pricing is still lower than what British Airways charges, so an arbitrage opportunity remains. However the value gap has narrowed.

My working model is to assume that the best differences between Avios programs will eventually be narrowed, otherwise savvy travelers will just move points between programs. I’ve been surprised that Iberia redemptions for business class on their own flights have remained so good (eg. Northeast – Madrid for 34,000 points each way). Qatar Airways JetBlue redemptions also haven’t changed.

Bear in mind that Qatar hasn’t been supporting booking American regional jet flights, though if you book mainline and there’s regional on the same route they’ve been able to make a change (for which Qatar charges $25).

Dan notes as well,

You might technically be able to book AA awards within the contiguous U.S. and Canada for just 11K Finnair Avios in economy or 30K in first class, though successfully booking these awards through Finnair has proven elusive. If you’ve managed to do so, please share your experience.

This is a shame, not surprising, but I especially do not like seeing unpublished changes without notice.

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