Oneworld carrier Qatar Airways is selling extremely cheap tickets to a very exotic destination. The gulf carrier takes you from Europe to Seoul, where you can catch an Asiana Airlines flight to Saipan, the largest airport of the Northern Mariana Islands. You can fly from various European countries with prices starting as cheap as €575 for a ticket that includes full board service and a checked bag up to 25 kg on all six flights involved.
If you are willing to spend more for better service and much more legroom, Qatar Airways currently sells discounted business class tickets to Saipan, too.
Worldwide travel restrictions are in place to slow the spread of Covid-19. We strongly recommend gathering detailed information about the travel and quarantine restrictions that apply to your desired origin and destination.
A good start is the International Air Transport Association (IATA) website. It provides current updates on a country’s immigration policies. Even better, the Covid-19 Travel Regulations Map is one of the most useful tools you can find.
You may find these fares with departure from the following airports:
- Budapest at HUF 210,100 (~€533)
- Prague at CZK 15,437 (~€611)
- Madrid at €612
- Warsaw at PLN 2,822 (~€650)
- Oslo at NOK 6,497 (~€552)
- Brussels at €644
- Milan at €655
- Zagreb at HRK 5,054 (~€671)
- Belgrade at €663
- London at £599 (~€700)
We just show one airport per country, but prices are usually similar from other airports served by Qatar Airways.
The tickets include 25 kg of checked luggage and 7 kg of hand luggage. These tickets are also refundable – however, you’d get a voucher, not money.
Search & Book
According to the fare rules, tickets at this price are sold until March 31, 2021. They may run out of availability sooner. A minimum stay of four days applies to get the lowest prices, with the maximum being set at 2 months. You can find availabilities until January 2022. You can check the exact available dates on Google Flights or search for the flights directly on qatarairways.com.
Why is booking with an airline better than with an online travel agency?
More often than not, online travel agencies offer lower fares than airlines do. We still recommend booking with the airlines directly. There are two main reasons for that:
Better Customer Service
In case any problems like delays, cancellations or missed connections arise, you can communicate directly with the airline. The airline has to take care of you because you have a contract with them.
If a travel agency issues your ticket, you may have to reach out to them first. You also depend on your OTA to forward information like flight changes instead of receiving them directly from the airline. In many cases, you may get a prime exhibition of responsibility shifting rather than problem-solving.
This especially applies to premium tickets. You don’t want to spend more than €1,000 to wind up with some budget OTA’s telephone hotline in case anything goes wrong.
Baggage and Other Fees
Economy fares not including hold luggage are industry standard by now. In most cases, travel agencies charge much higher baggage fees than the airlines themselves. If bags are not included in your fare, airlines are often the cheaper alternative.
This also applies to other things like food services, insurances or priority treatment. In almost all cases, you pay less for additional amenities when booking on the airlines’ website.
Northern Mariana Islands
Like neighboring Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands are an Overseas Territory of the United States of America. Therefore, you need an ESTA or United States Visa to enter the country.
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Comments (3)
Beware of seat reservations and upgrades when booking with multiple travelers, even for Privilege Club Platinum status; Qatar Airways is being inconsistent and uncooperative:
Here’s what happened to me: I booked a trip to Southern Africa, economy, for 3 people. As a Privilege Club Platinum member, I was able to reserve seats for all 3 travellers free of charge, which I was very pleased about. Since I was able to redeem my QCredits for a business upgrade, I was able to do that successfully for one leg of the trip. The nasty surprise: the booking is then split, meaning my companion travellers received their own booking number. I was made aware of this in the course of the upgrade request and as a precaution I called Qatar Airways twice to ask what would happen to the seat reservations of my 2 companion travellers. I was assured that the existing seat reservations remain in place. Only in the case of a desired change, these would be subject to a fee because I am no longer in the same booking as a Privilege Club Platinum member. So far so good. Therefore, I did the upgrade, we got 2 different bookings, the seat reservations remained.
Then the bad surprise a few weeks later: for the flight VIE-DOH the flight schedule was changed by 1.5 hours and the aircraft was changed from A350 to B787. It came as it had to come: the seat reservations of the companion passengers were GONE. But not all, but only from those 3 flights that remained UNCHANGED. On the flight VIE-DOH the seats remained reserved.
A subsequent call to the Qatar hotline brought nothing: the system does not provide for free seat reservations; any restoration of the original seat reservations would be subject to a charge (approx. Euro 200!). A complaint on the Qatar website has also been unsuccessful so far. The argument: after the split of the two reservations, the system automatically deletes the seat reservations for the fellow passengers, since they would have no status and therefore no free seats. But this is total non-sense, because firstly, the seat reservations remained after the split, only when the 1st flight was changed, it came to the deletion and secondly exactly the changed flight was not affected by the cancellation of the seats, but only the 3 unchanged flights.
What remains: despite assurance of the airline that already booked seats remain, these were deleted. The airline refuses with inconclusive arguments to restore the reservations. I find this procedure extremely unfriendly to the customers. If Qatar Airways does not finally agree, I must advise every Privilege Club status holder not to make a similar booking with several passengers and then upgrade only for themselves, because the other passengers lose any advantages of the joint booking.
Hey guys,
any infos on the mileage accredititation for that deal?
Hi Thomas,
I’m not entirely sure why we haven’t included the mileage in this deal, but you can find it on our German version of this same deal:
https://travel-dealz.de/deal/fluege-marianen/
As Qatar Airways and Asiana are in different alliances, it’s not that straightforward for this deal. You’ll have different options for each airline’s segments.
Hope that helps. Have a nice weekend!