Airline: Qatar Airways

Flight Number: QR72

Plane: Boeing 787-9

Cabin: Business Class

Seat: 2A

This Flight

Qatar Airways operate two flights from Frankfurt to Doha in the evening, one about 17:30, and the other QR72 at 20:30. It’s a relatively short flight at about 6 and a bit hours, so it’s not always easy to know how to spend the time!

The flight lands in Doha at 03:25 local time, which is a bit nasty – but worked for my onward connecting flight at 09:00.

It’s always a bit difficult to know what to do on a flight like this – so I made the decision to drink, work, eat, work, have a few more drinks… and then stay up for landing.

Checking In

I am afraid to say checking in was a poor experience.

I got to the check in desks at 16:15, when they were still open for the 17:30 flight to Doha…. I duly checked in, and was told “no”, and to come back at 17:00. That didn’t seem right to me – but Germans can be pretty dogmatic, and there was no way of changing the mind of the check in lady. This was very frustrating to me, as I needed to make calls and do work, which I ended up having to do in some cafe land-side.

First in line (with another call to do at 18:15) I was stood ready to check in at 17:00….. The staff stood at the back laughing and joking until 17:30 – great use of everyone’s time! Seemingly a Manager checked me in and I queried (a) why I couldn’t at 16:15; and (b) why I was told to come back at 17:00 and wasted my time waiting for 30 minutes. The Manager shrugged, saying the Check In lady should have allowed me to check in at 16:15 – and recalled her to explain herself…… The check lady in question went Qatar red before running to the back in hiding, with the Manager following her….

The Manager came back saying what the lady had said was not true – and apologized. We agreed that being Business Class the point was that I had business to conduct, and waiting in line was not part of that…. Germans are terrible at serving customer issues, so with a nod of the head, and half apology I moved on with life.

The Lounge

Technically the lounge that Qatar Airways ‘use’ at Frankfurt is the Priority Lounge. It’s not a great lounge, but was able to offer me a much needed shower!

The much better lounge at Frankfurt is the JAL Lounge, which was very busy due to also being used for departing a JAL 777, a Korean Air 777 and a BA flight. They still let me in with my Qatar Airways ticket – but getting my much wanted shower put me in a line of abut 15. So, I showered in the Priority Lounge.

The Plane

This was Qatar Airway’s Boeing 787-9 – A7-BHN to be precise.

The plane is equipped with 30 x Business Class seats, and 281 Economy Class. Qatar Airways do not have a Premium product, and First Class does not operate on the 787.

The Seat

The seat was a sort of Q-Suite. It’s not a Q-Suite, in fact it is a Adient Aerospace Ascent, but it does have doors. However for “operational reasons” the doors could not be unlocked to close during the flight.

I have previously reviewed this seat in my flight from Doha to Dubai.

Food and Drink

Drinks

As always upon boarding the cabin crew introduced themselves, and offered me about 10 different drinks, including champagne, cocktails, juices, etc

I picked the Rose champagne, as I don’t really like the ‘white’ champagne they offer.

Qatar Airways offer an excellent range of drinks, including cocktails, teas, wines and beers. I really liked for Bordeaux, which I had with my meal.

Ahead of the meal service came drinks – I took a beer which was severed with nuts. Three quality beers were offered (Stella, Budweiser and Leffe) – which are miles better than the offerings of other airlines!

Food

Qatar Airways in theory offer two sets of meals. One is the multi-course and the other a snack. However, on virtually all the flights I’ve done with Qatar, the second meal has not been proactively offered – or if it has I have been too full on a relatively short flight. On this flight I wasn’t offered the second meal, and I was too full for it!

The Multi-Course Meal

This meal is dine on demand, and you can have it at any point you want in the flight, which is always miles better than other carriers such as British Airways or American Airlines who give your meal when they decide.

Options for a starter included;

• Soup of the day
• Arabic Mezze
• Tuna Tataki

I decided to go for soup of the day, which was asparagus……I probably should have gone for the Arabic Mezze!

Options for the main were;

• Angus beef
• Qatar Spiced Chicken
• Lobster Termidor
• Pumpin and Ricotta Mezzelune

I was able to pre-order my food for this flight, and went for the beef. Served with a glass of Bordeaux, both were an excellent pairing and the beef was excellent!

The desert options were;

• Chocolate Tarte
• Fresh Fruit

I was also offered cheese. I think it’s a cultural thing, but the cheese was offered before the sweet – which does make sense as, but I guess culturally it doesn’t if you’re British.

I said yes to the cheese and the chocolate tarte, and both were very good indeed!

The Light Meal

If you were still hungry, there were two options on the menu;

• Beef gnocchi
• Lamb sandwich

Even if I was hungry, I think I may have passed!

Snacks

I have taken terrible pictures – but a variety of crisps, fruit and cookies were placed in a bowl at the back of the cabin.

Amenities Kit

There seems to be the arbitrary rule with Qatar Airways that if you are flying to Doha you get the cardboard Amenities Kit, and if you are flying from Doha you get a ‘proper’ Amenities Kit.

I was subject to the cardboard kit, which included;

• Socks
• Eye Mask
• Lip Balm
• Hand Cream
• Some kind of spray

As this flight was over night I was also provided with PJ’s.

Entertainment

It’s always been my experience that Qatar Airways’ entertainment is extremely generous.

There are literally hours and hours of music (often multiple albums of the same bands), which is great. On this flight there were about 6 albums by The Eagles and 4 or 5 by Aerosmith. Plus loads of live concerts, etc.

There was a whole bunch of other entertainment choices of film, TV, sports, etc – more than you could ever watch on a flight around the world!

One of the great things about Qatar Airways is they’ve allowed the 787’s cameras to be connected to the entertainment system! This combined with the cockpit overlay is great – especially if you’re a pilot/geek like me!

Headphones are offered as per of the package. Often, I use headphones to save getting mine out. I find the Oryx headphones to be decent – and unlike American Airlines, they’re not demanded back 90 minutes before landing!

Wifi

Wifi was available for this flight.

Because the doors were not working/in use on the suites, I was told I could have a free Wifi voucher, because of this. The Wifi worked well for this flight – which is a bit different to some of the other flights I’ve taken with Qatar Airways!

Usually or otherwise the cost is $10, which isn’t bad,

Cabin Crew

The Cabin crew on this flight were excellent. I was introduced before take off by each cabin crew member working in Business Class. I was regularly asked if I wanted refills or anything else.

Kacy, it has to be said, was exceptional. Whether offering to take pictures of me (I politely declined) – to explaining to me about the wine list, even down to explaining about the berries, etc. She just was on it and really knew her stuff!

The only small thing that the Cabin Crew kind of forgot was to ask if I wanted a second meal. But I would never have been able to manage it!

Landing in Doha

Unfortunately, the departure from Frankfurt was about 1 hour late, and so we landed an hour late into Doha.

Even more unfortunately was the 40 minute bus trip from the aircraft to the terminal!

Other than that my luggage was checked through, so I hit the Platinum Lounge!

Conclusion

This was an excellent flight with Qatar Airways.

The cabin crew were fantastic, the food was excellent, the wines/drink were great, the Wifi worked, the seat was comfortable.

My only complaints are the crappy cardboard Amenities Kits and possibly the lounge, if you don’t know you can access JAL!

Actually…..my other big complaint is the checking in process. My afternoon would have been a lot better spent and a lot more productive in the JAL Lounge doing work – than slumped in some land-side cafe that had no charging, trying to get stuff done on the public Wifi…. As I said above, Germans can be pretty dogmatic and often fail to see the bigger picture, and really I should have asked for a manager at the time, than argue about it afterwards…. so a lesson for next time!