Koki Saito's decisive second goal for QPR came 13 minutes after coming on as a substitute
Hull City remain deep in relegation trouble after losing at home to in-form Queens Park Rangers in the Championship.
Second-half goals from Kenneth Paal and Koki Saito earned Marti Cifuentes' side a fourth consecutive league victory.
Joe Gelhardt's excellent left-footed strike in his 100th senior career appearance proved mere consolation for the hosts, who will drop into the bottom three if Portsmouth avoid defeat by Stoke on Wednesday.
The R's, however, continue to look upwards and climb up to ninth, now just four points outside of the play-off positions.
Rangers should have opened the scoring after just four minutes when Rayan Kolli, scorer of their winner at Plymouth on Saturday, seemed to completely mistime his header from Paal's devilish inswinging corner.
Harry Vaughan was the hosts' brightest spark in the first half and he set up Steven Alzate, who sliced his effort wide from just outside the box.
That moment seemed to encourage Vaughan and following a mesmerising run, he took a shot at the near post which was well pushed wide by R's keeper Paul Nardi.
QPR remained a threat from set-pieces and after another Paal corner was only partially cleared, Kieran Morgan sent in a wicked ball from the left edge of the box which bamboozled Carl Rushworth but shaded the outside of the post.
The Tigers started the second half on the front foot and when Gustavo Puerta's corner deceived Nardi, Gelhardt ought to have done better than heading over the bar from close range.
At the other end, Paal's intelligent cutback found Paul Smyth 15 yards out but his shot was too central and allowed Rushworth to make a smart instinctive stop, with Morgan only able to hit the side-netting with the rebound.
Eighteen minutes into the second half, substitute Alfie Lloyd's accurate cross picked out Paal, whose first effort was blocked brilliantly on the line but following a goalmouth scramble he scored at the second attempt.
Rangers doubled the scoring as another one of Cifuentes' substitutes, Saito, skilfully went past full-back Cody Drameh and from the tightest of angles lashed a venomous shot high into the roof of the net past the despairing Rushworth.
With the clock running down, Leeds loanee Gelhardt's wonderful dipping strike from 25 yards beat Nardi to halve the deficit but despite late Hull pressure, the Hoops managed the game well to see out a second away win in four days.
Post-match reaction
Hull City boss Ruben Selles told BBC Radio Humberside:
"I think the first goal put us on the back foot and the second happened so quickly, we didn't have time to react.
"It is important we analyse the situations and see what went wrong. We have to continue with the players we have and introduce the new players, some of whom are coming from not having competitive games for eight to 10 weeks."
On QPR's second goal: "It can not happen. Cody [Drameh] can get beat in that situation but we were not ready for that quick throw-in.
"I think that it was more about the level of attention for the team - those situations are the kind of situations we are trying to remove from our game."
QPR boss Marti Cifuentes told BBC Radio London:
"I'm very happy and I think we need to give value to the team because it is a difficult team away [from home] against a team that has changed a lot since when we faced them last time.
"Today, the pitch was not at a level that a league like this deserves so it was very difficult to play how we wanted but still we scored two goals."
On Koki Saito: "We knew that from his time in the Netherlands, where it's a league with a lot of one-v-ones - that's exactly his specialty.
"That's where he makes the x-factor moments. Hopefully, today will be a little bit of a relief to him."
