The flight crew makes all of the difference.
I could just stop it right there. Hi there, my name is Kevin and I make honest,
unsponsored and to-the-point narrated video tours about hotels and flights all over the world.
This is my 95th video and today we are finishing up my 30 hour journey to Singapore on board a
QSuite equipped A350-1000. I hope you’ll stick around and come along for the rest of the journey.
Welcome to Doha’s bright and shiny Hamad International airport.
This is the second leg in my journey that started around 16 hours ago in Philadelphia.
If you’d like to know more about the exact fare that I paid as well as my next five videos in
queue- trust me, there are some really good ones coming- please check out the description below.
So, originally I was supposed to have a three hour layover here in Doha, a layover that I
was ironically, a bit bummed wasn’t just a bit longer- I’m weird, I know. Well wouldn’t you know,
Qatar Airways is here to make dreams come true because they decided to cancel my original flight
and load us all onto another existing flight scheduled for six hours later.
Do you know who else is in the business of making dreams come true?
Not me, but that seemed like a good segway. But now that I’ve got you, let me give you a 10 second
history. Before 2020 I spent years building a restaurant business in Vietnam. Then COVID came,
that ended and now here I am some 16 months after having edited my first ever video. Time flies. So
when I say I would really appreciate your thumbs up on this video and a sub, it is the absolute
truth- it really does make a difference. Also have a new Patreon if you’re interested and as always,
my ears are open if you have any comments, suggestions or nicely worded criticisms.
So, as you can probably already see, we are in the expansive Al Mourjan Business Class lounge.
This wasn’t my plan though. You see, the Al Safwa First Class lounge sells entry for around $160 to
business class passengers. Considering all that the lounge offers, for me- it would have been
money well spent for six of nine layover hours. Wouldn’t you know it though, you can only buy
access if you bought your ticket directly through Qatar Airways. Guess what, I didn’t. So here we
are. Not complaining, this is a fantastic lounge but yeah, two lounges are better than one always.
I had three priorities here, well four I guess. Two meals, a shower and someway,
somehow, sleep. I landed at around 6pm and didn’t sleep at all on the flight over.
Step one, small meal. So, I headed to what I’m going to call the fancy sandwich shop. It was a
nice and open space with a whole lot of people in it. In fact, that’s a theme in this lounge.
A whole lotta people everywhere. The sandwich, by the way, was ok- absolutely nothing special.
While I was eating I was trying to plan a way to sleep and realized there was a Quiet Zone
conveniently located behind this sandwich shop. The showers are also back here. So,
in this area- which with the high ceilings and dull waves of snoring all around you gave the
sense you were sleeping in a museum is equipped with a few dozen of these pods or relaxing rooms.
They are strictly first come first served and relatively speaking there aren’t that
many of them. When I walked up to the counter, the agent verified the length of my layover. I think
it needs to be 5 hours or more to gain access- he told me there was only one available but it
didn’t have a couch, it just had two chairs. Well, I didn’t even know they had couches,
but instantly I wanted a couch. Anyway, I took it and after a little while eventually made
my own couch. There were no pillows available which was odd, but they did have blankets.
I stayed in the room for around 5 hours, two of which I slept-
after that it was definitely time for a shower. The shower suites were nice,
clean and spacious with Diptyque amenities- it certainly got the job done.
Step one, two and three done- now it’s onto the main restaurant on
the other side of the lounge sitting above the gorgeous reflecting pool.
Saw the American 777 which began service to Doha from JFK just a week prior and tried to make
sense of the mayhem that this restaurant was. It had a small buffet line served by chefs. It
had a sushi bar that you ordered from and then needed to somehow explain to the very patient
staff which table you were at since there were no numbers. There was a self service area with
grab and go packaged bites and then there was a sit down restaurant with a proper menu.
Did I mention, this is all in the exact same room? After searched for a few minutes I was
happily lead pretty far away to a nice small booth overlooking the apron. I went up and ordered some
sushi and ordered a main from the a la carte menu, enjoyed with a glass of Charles Heidsieck
Rose. I’ll say the food was well intentioned and beautiful, but not the best execution.
Had the filet not been butterflied and cooked seemingly for a few days, it would have been
great- but still better than the vast majority of business class lounges, this isn’t complaining.
It was time to head to the gate. Here’s one thing perhaps not everyone knows.
During the pandemic, Qatar Airways essentially did the opposite of every other airline.
While everyone else was reducing flights, staff and destinations-
Qatar leaned into COVID. The kept every route that they could keep open, open. I remember
when in lockdown in Saigon, Qatar and Singapore were really the only two international airlines
that kept up with daily service. And so, their fiscal year that just recently closed
saw a record profit for the airline and now, in June 2022 when this was filmed, the airport is
as busy as ever- and still functioning well. We would be departing from gate C5 today.
Boarding passes are scanned on entry into the gate area, but interestingly there is absolutely no
transit security for passengers- at least from the US. We were just let free into the terminal. The
seats inside the boarding area were in I believe 8 zones. Premium, handicapped and then zone 1-6. You
were, of course to sit in your correct zone, which were in the order they’d be boarded.
Boarding was on time and we made our way down to the aircraft, a 3 year old
A350-1000. 12A.
Today’s early morning flight would be departing around 30 minutes late and bring us up to a
cruising altitude of 35000 feet for our 3800 mile flight to Changi, where we landed just
ahead of schedule. So, just last week, I went into detail about all of the seat
details completely in my video from Philly, today I’m still going to show you everything,
but I’ll focus on the primary differences between this aircraft and flight and the previous one.
I was in 2 bravo today, a window seat but one that is closer to the aisle. As soon as you walk on,
especially after coming from a 777- one thing is very clear, QSuites are pretty tight in an A350.
Let’s take a look at the details. The 1000s have 46 Qsuites spread over two cabins.
For the seats to avoid, 100% it’s all about row 1. Especially the window seats- due to the curvature
of the fuselage and angle of the aisles, all of these seats are noticeably a bit smaller than
the standard QSuites. And these on the A350 are already smaller than on a 777.
Essentially, these suites are an inch narrower in every direction. By my own measurements,
the seat width and depth are both an inch less- as is the width of the full suite itself.
The only area which is longer is the bed length, which is five inches longer at it’s longest point,
but the foot well is also narrower. Normally an each all around wouldn’t make a difference,
but when you have a pretty high door that closes, you can feel it a little.
The cabin did feel a bit more open though without over head middle bins.
So, besides being directly next to the window versus being next to the
aisle, the next biggest difference in the seats are whether you have a corner nook
seating or not. You can see the armrest area difference between the two.
Otherwise, the seats and amenities are essentially the same as the 777 flight.
Similar Dyptique Amenity kit, though this time it came in a leatherish pouch instead of a gift box.
For a pre-flight drink, I enjoyed one of their signature mint lemonades,
which is very refreshing especially with an ice cold towel.
Seat controls are near identical except here the remote is the newest generation
and while the armrest here is much larger, it functions the same way.
Pajamas were handed out and the decent noise canceling headphones were already at the seat.
Thankfully, plenty of air vents for the window seats.
Some of the other controls like the crew call button are located under the IFE monitor, along
with the USB. The content was exactly the same with hundreds of choices of all sorts of content.
Pushback came and it kinda felt like we were the last ones to leave and in reality it’s kinda true-
only around 10 flights left from the 1-3am bank. A pretty short taxi brought us to
line up for our take off to the north. The line up, spool up and take off are next.
Let me super briefly talk about the service on this flight. Had I not had the best crew I’ve
ever had on the flight prior, this probably would have been pretty great. But there was absolutely
no comparison. Everyone on this flight did their jobs correctly and were polite- but every
single moment of the flight they were rushing around as if they were understaffed by half.
I’m talking literally running at 2 points.
Our route this morning was pretty straightforward, mostly following the direct route.
For the first meal service, whatever you’d like to call a 3am meal, I did a bit of a strange pick
and choose. I started off with a glass of Savignon blanc as we passed over Dubai and got my Netflix
going. By the way, I wasn’t streaming, but I could have been- wifi was an easy peasy $10 for the full
flight. Feel free to pause the menu to take a closer look. Note, the red prices on the wines
are just a sampling of current selling prices for each bottle in the US to give you an idea.
So, I started off by asking them to reserve one of the breakfast main dishes for me
for prior to landing, which they kindly did. All food service on Qatar business class is
a la carte anytime dining. So, I stared with one of the breakfast starters,
an Assiette of Cold Cuts. I had to look it up, it just means Plate in French. It
included smoked balik salmon, smoked mackerel, caper berry, goat cheese and an egg mimosa.
I’ll say, it was delicious, and easily the most beautiful cold cut plate in the sky, but there
were just way too many really strong flavors going on there- each on their own were delicious though.
I followed that up with something that actually made me smile as they put the plate down because
it smelled and looked that good. This was one of the light options, a Hot pot pulled oxtail open
sandwich on toasted brioche and it was everything that all hot pot pulled oxtail dreams are made of.
After that, I made the unusual choice, for me at least, of a cardamom chai which hit the spot.
A quick trip to the bathroom found a nice sized compartment with its own window,
but cleanliness standards were nowhere near the attention to detail on the previous flight.
A look at the bed in full flat mode. Mattress pads were not
proactively offered on this flight and I didn’t see any in the overhead bins.
Again, the sit is longer but you can see how narrow it gets. And similar to the
777 seat, this one because of the seat itself and also the headrest does not quite lay totally flat.
A few hours of rest later and I woke up with the sunrise and started to look for my breakfast.
Along with a croissant and a passion fruit greek yogurt parfait was a Qatari spiced beef kofta
with fried egg, spinach, za’atar manakis and spiced bean stew. All delicious, but if I’m honest
the Americano and the super buttery croissant were probably my favorite things on the tray.
After that we had around an hour until landing as
we cruised alongside Malaysia before passing by Kuala Lumpur.
Located just to the east of the city center, we approached Changi and landed from the north.
I’d transited through Singapore a few times during Covid, but this was my first time
actually entering since the Pandemic began and I was met with a painful hour long queue
for immigration. It really did not look that long. So, overall- by any other standards,
a very nice flight- by the best of Qatar standards, it was a bit lacking.
Now onto the Flip Flop Score. Feel free to pause to take a closer look and a genuine thank you
if you’ve clicked that thumbs up button or subscribed because of this video. I really
hope to see you on Sunday at the stunning and other-worldly Apurva Kempinski Bali.