Well, it didn’t take long for Qatar Airways to fix a major restriction with booking awards for others, but sadly other problems remain.

The award restrictions in place as of June 2026

Back in June 2026, Qatar Airways Privilege Club introduced some new measures to fight fraud in its loyalty program. While before that date, you could book awards for anyone, that changed with awards issued June 2026 and later. You could now only book awards for

• You, the account holder
• Up to 4 adult Privilege Club members you can add to “My List“
• Up to 6 others who do not have a Privilege Club membership in the “Family & Friends” program

Sounds reasonable at first glance, but the real kicker to this announcement was the need for qualifying activity. You needed one of the following two forms of activity on top of having an account open for a minimum of 30 days:

• Credit a flight to Privilege Club
• Spend on a Qatar Airways-branded credit card

Many customers didn’t realize this was a problem until after transferring in points to Qatar Avios, perhaps swayed by one of the many transfer bonuses over the months. Little did they know that just transferring Avios into the program itself wasn’t qualifying activity!

But now the most crippling restriction has been lifted

Per MilesTalk, the requirement to no longer need qualifying activity is gone. Dave Grossman received the following confirmation from Qatar Airways:

Yes, the restriction has been revised effective from 14Sep and now you can be able to invite or add family members in your account.

Usually companies don’t make changes like this out of the bottom of their heart. If we had to go out on a limb, we’d say this bottleneck likely became a deterrent. Perhaps it cost Qatar some money with points transfers they would have had in a normal cycle. Or maybe it simply tied up their customer service agents. Whatever the reason, this particular restriction is now gone.

You still need to add others to a list, and that could still be a problem

Before you go out an celebrate, all award booking changes from June 2026 are not gone. To book an award for someone else, you still need to add them to one of two lists:

• My List, which is intended for adults who have a Privilege Club account
• Friends & Family, which is intended for those who do not have a Privilege Club account

Again, you might think that seems reasonable, but there’s a problem in their definitions. It can make sense for adults who do or do not have an account because that should envelope all possibilities. But let’s talk through a couple of lingering issues.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

There’s a problem with how this process works for the kids. The assumption from Qatar Airways is that children will always end up in the “Friends & Family” list. In fact, they won’t let you add a child to the “My List” group because there’s a restriction that everyone in “My List” needs to be at least 18 years old.

Where is the tie-up? If your child has a Privilege Club account, they’re going to run into problems. Children will need to be added to the “Friends & Family” list, but that’s only possible for people without a Privilege Club account. In other words, if your child has a Privilege Club account, you may no longer be able to book an award flight for them. The easy answer isn’t just “have your child book a flight only for themselves from their own account” because good luck having what looks like a child flying solo internationally. And if irregular operations happen and they end up on a different flight from you? Oh boy.

Now, potentially, you could try to add your child under a different email address than what you’ve used to sign up your own child for their Privilege Club account. But the system is also set up to flag this and reject anyone they believe to be a member who already exists. Hopefully this restriction will be adjusted next as it’s the next-worst offender.

How many people you can add to each list is still very limiting

To book an award for someone else, you need to add them to one of your two lists. Again, that sounds innocent enough, but depending on your booking patterns, you can hit the limits pretty quickly. Privilege Club only permits up to 4 adults to be added to “My List” and up to 6 people to “Friends & Family”.

Let’s say you want to travel with your spouse, your spouse’s parents, and your parents on a trip. Or, you want to bring along your spouse, your 2 adult children, and their spouses or your parents, These aren’t unrealistic scenarios. But what matters here is if all these people you’re bringing along have Privilege Club accounts of their own. If they don’t, you can book awards for everyone from your account. If they do, you have a problem.

You can eventually change who is in each list, but they’re locked in for 6 months. Plus, that doesn’t help in the scenarios above where you want to bring a larger crew with you and everyone already has an account.

Frankly, it would make more sense to cap the entire list at 10 people, then assign each other representative to one list or another. There are some differences in how those in “My List” and “Friends & Family” earn Avios and Qpoints, so they can maintain those differences if they want. What would be helpful is relaxing the low enrollment limits within each group. Combining the limit to 10 in total allows for more flexibility.

What else causes you a headache with Qatar Airways Privilege Club?