My friends (a married couple) asked me to plan their trip to Africa in June 2025 and wanted to make the best use of their 400K (Amex MR & Capital One) points. I suggested that they book Qatar Q-suites (360 days ahead of time) using Avios and explained to them the whole process of creating a British Avios account and merging it with Qatar Avios to complete the booking (https://awardcracker.com/master-your-avios-redemption-skills/).
Qatar Q-suites from the US to Africa
- If you have any type of transferable points (Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Bilt etc.,), I recommend trying to find Q-suites almost a year ahead (https://awardcracker.com/book-qatar-q-suites-360-days-ahead-of-time/).
- For example, there is an available Q-suite space for two passengers (June 3rd week 2025) to go from several US cities to African cities like Nairobi, Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
- I told my friends to go ahead and book two one-way Q-suites with Qatar Avios and then they are going to wait another 10 days to find space for the return flight.
- They wanted to land first in Nairobi, then take a short flight from the nearby Wilson airport (link) to their all-inclusive accommodation inside the Masai Mara National Park (link) to enjoy several safari day trips.
- From Nairobi, they wanted to travel to Victoria Falls, VFA (link) for 1-2 nights to view the falls and take a helicopter scenic tour.
Award Booking Kenya Airways Regional Flights
Kenya Airways flights can be booked with Flying Blue points and a free one-way stopover is possible by calling the agents.
- From Victoria Falls, they will travel to Cape Town (link) and stay 3 nights.
Return flights from African cities to the US
- From Cape Town, my friends will take the return flight back to the US.
- Qatar’s Q-suites can be booked from several of these cities back to the US with varying connection times. One can choose longer connection times (e.g., JRO-DOH) in Doha airport to enjoy the Al Mourjan lounge (link).
- Depending on your free time, the Africa trip can be extended to include Johannesburg, Namibia and Rwanda (Gorilla Trek).
Conclusion
My friends are very excited to take the famous Qatar Q-suites for the first time in their life all the way to Africa which gives them enough time to enjoy the lounge in Doha along with world’s best business class seats and service. During this whole booking process we also found out that Qatar agents are able to find the Q-suite award space which is not showing up online. The agent was able to quickly tell us all the available Q-suite award space between several city pairs from Africa to the US and vice versa.