u/wgtnmax

Will be flying Auckland to London via Doha, but has to do separate bookings in order to use Avios. The airline has added a note to the bookings to sort of link them, but I’m worried that our 2h25min transit may be problematic if the first flight is delayed.

Anyone got experience of issues caused by something similar? Should I try move the booking to the next flight (which makes it a 10h transit instead)?

Looking for some advice from people who have experience going through the transit and entry process in Doha while carrying restricted medications.

I have a trip booked from London to Auckland with Qatar and we have a 14-hour layover in Doha. We’re flying Business Class so have full access to lounges in the airport (so we have a comfortable option if we stay air-side).

With such a long layover I’d quite like to do one of the city tours but we’ll be travelling with medication that is classified as a highly controlled psychotropic substance in Qatar (Class B equivalent).

If we want to leave the airport and enter the city it requires a lot of paperwork, and I’m wondering if its worth the hassle or if its best just to stay in the terminal, as much as I’d love to check out a new city/country I’ve not seen before. The steps would be:

• Get a GP letter on official surgery letterhead
• Have that letter certified by a UK solicitor
• Send the certified document to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to get an Apostille stamp
• Send the document to the Qatar Embassy in London for official attestation
• Submit the fully stamped paperwork to the Qatar Ministry of Public Health online to get a personal import permit.

Has anyone been through this process for a transit and was it as daunting as it sounds, or do you think it’s worth it? Like I say we have a comfortable fallback option of the business class lounges and this does feel like a lot of effort for a 3.5 city tour...

Had an email from Qatar that they’d released a bunch of reward seats. I have a stack of Avios from a BA credit card and was able to book myself and my SO, in Business Class, London Heathrow to Auckland return for £1,900 + 538,000 Avios early next year.

Absolutely thrilled 🤩 I’d resigned myself to not being able to get the two of us on one reward flight booking.

Should note I had to book London/Doha and Doha/Auckland separately as the full trip wasn’t available in one go