Hello, my name is Paul Stewart
And I'm at London Heathrow where I'm about to fly to Doha with Qatar Airways. A few months ago
I flew in their first class product and a lot of subscribers mentioned that I should check out their new Q suite business product
So here it is
The internet was awash with
well
frankly near fatuous praise from the product and I wasn't sure if it actually was amazing or if people just tend to say nice things
If you give them a free business class flight. Since I was in London
I figured I would check it out myself. As with all of my videos, I pay with my own cash and the airline doesn't know I'm coming.
The journey began at check-in where I was able to skip the queue as I was traveling in business and was directed
towards the fast-track line through customs. Being 5 a.m. it was pretty quiet and shortly afterwards
I was in Qatar premium lounge, which is shared with first and business class passengers. As with all of their lounges
They don't allow One World status passengers inside which keeps it quiet
Although I feel that kind of goes against the One World principles of sharing lounges. Anyway, that's a debate to be had on online forums
The lounge itself is really impressive and I've created a separate
detailed video review and a link to that is in video description below. As it's a shared business and
first-class lounge, the standard of the service is really brought up to first class with table service and a small ala carte menu.
There was also a large selection of food that you could serve yourself as well.
I had a quick bite and then relaxed and waited for my flight. Another detail
I really like is that the boarding pass comes in this flash pocket.
It really does raise the standard of the whole experience as I've only ever had similar pockets in first-class
My bus to Doha was at Boeing 777-300ER
and was only delivered to Qatar Airways the previous week.
The business cabin is separated into two sections with my seat. being in the second one.
The seats are all in a 1-2-1 layout which means they all have direct aisle access
The window seats alternate between forward and rearward facing, and although I thought it may feel weird,
It's actually perfectly fine sitting backwards. If anything
It makes it easier to sit and gawk out the windows staring at the massive General Electric hair dryers
The middle seats are obviously best for couples with an adjustable divider that lowers.
In fact, the middle seats convert into a bed as you see with this footage
I took after takeoff. The crew
Were really proud of their product and offered to set up the bed in a pair of empty seats
I should also say that you can open up four middle seats for a family or a group of friends.
Although I wasn't able to get this on camera as there were other passengers in them.
Shortly after I took my seat, a welcoming drink was brought around and a warm towel. As it was still early in the morning
I went for fruit juice, grapes, I think from France.
As always, let's go through this seat in more detail.
In front of you is a large touchscreen, although I'll come back to that in more detail later.
Below that is a fold-out table which feels pretty sturdy.
And next to that is a ledge where you can store stuff
Within easy reach are the buttons for the seat adjustment and in-flight entertainment, if you don't want to use the touchscreen. And power plugs!
It's a minor issue. I know although a lot of airlines have power and USB ports in obscure places
I had to use the torch on my phone to find it in a Lufthansa 747-8
business seat.
By the way, a link to that review below. But this is well placed in your line of sight.
Between you and the aisle is more storage space and this whole thing rises to form an armrest.
And above that, are more lights.
On the other side of you you've also got another adjustable armrest
Now I'm glad to see that they've retained the overhead lockers! Some people prefer to delete them and have a more open looking roof
although I've just rather more storage.
And here's something I really appreciate, overhead air vents as I always say I find aircraft cabins far too hot
generally and love a constant flow of air. And of course,
Just importantly, this seat offers a fantastic view of the GE 90 powering the aircraft.
Now just before we leave here's the amenity kits which are pretty well stocked
There's toothbrushes and shavers in the toilet and I'll show you that later
And of course, I'll be giving the amenity kit away to a subscriber with more details on that later in the video
Another feature that I really like about this seat is that you can reach the leg rest while still sitting up straight
This means you can get comfy even when your seat is in a take-off position
It took about 15 minutes of filming to capture the slats deploying and I also spotted this kangaroo a long way from home.
Now people who visit Heathrow frequently will know how busy the places is.
It took us around 30 minutes to cross the airport to get to our runway
With most of the time spent waiting to cross this runway. There was just a constant stream of piddly little A320s
We finally got to our runway and after waiting even longer. We started our six and a half hour journey to Doha.
I'll stop rabbiting on and mute the music so you can hear the engines spool up
The view as we crossed southeastern Britain was impressive and once we leveled out the in-flight service begun.
Warm nuts, presented in a way which Korean airlines would approve of, were delivered and a top-up of fruit juice.
While the 777 is a sturdy aircraft, it's now a generation behind the newer 787 and A350
So the air inside is drier
Fortunately for me, Qatar offer a facial mist which sprayed something into my face.
After wiping off my glasses breakfast was served with a smack platter which tasted fantastic
The entire menu, which I'll run through at the end of the video was served on a dine on demand basis.
So essentially you choose when and what you wanted to eat.
I hadn't eaten for a few hours and figured it was time for breakfast number two. I'm not much of a foodie
Although it was certainly some of the best business class food I've had. The vegetables, which I figure are probably pretty hard to work with,
Tasted perfectly fresh. And of course my glass of fruit juice never ran dry due to friendly and proactive service from the crew.
After that was cleared, a coffee and a snack were brought around.
Now keen avgeeks will have noticed that the view of the engine has slightly changed as I managed to move two sets forward.
There was something mesmerizing and potentially hypnotizing about that swirly doovalaky thing,
And yes, that is the technical term. And the turbine blades which you could see better from this angle.
Now I should mention here that the doors do close forming an enclosed suites
I did wonder if it might feel a little claustrophobic. Although it's really wide and it wasn't really an issue at all.
Since I was up at 4 a.m to get to the airport early, I figured I might try and have a nap.
While I went for a walk around the aircraft the friendly crew converted my seat into a comfortable bed.
After short nap, I was up again and had some coffee and some different grape juice
I hadn't eaten for around three hours and thinking it was time for some mini sliders
Just watching this now, as I edit the video is making me quite hungry.
I should mention that Qatar offer Wi-Fi on board and from memory the first 60 minutes was free
I did the obligatory social media check-in, but otherwise
I'd rather watch movies. By the way, a shout-out to my Instagram and Facebook pages
Make sure you check them out for the latest updates, videos and aviation photos like these ones.
Another warm towel was bought around and some chocolates.
Now let's run through the in-flight entertainment
You can choose between using the remote or the touchscreen directly
The actual hardware is pretty good with the screen providing a crisp clear image
The touch response was also pretty good. The content itself was reasonable and kept me reasonably entertained when I wasn't looking out the windows
Our route took us along the eastern border of Iraq and Iran where I saw quite an interesting circle of life, for oil.
Down there you've got oil refineries,
refining, and then later on there's just a constant stream of oil tankers trundling through the Persian Gulf.
Of course the circle ends with explosions of fire within the GE 90 just a few meters from my right leg.
The air was also full of excitement with a constant barrage of aircraft flying from the Middle East back to Europe
I don't know about you, but I'm uncontrollably excited thinking about the 777X's folding wingtips.
I'm sure they look amazing and can't wait to see them in a few years.
Anyway, I might also mention this cool pillow which are unique to the Q Suites and you're allowed to take them with you.
Well, I hope you are, I was told I could...
I had more coffee because I knew I had a long night of video editing ahead of me and we started a descent down into Doha
I'll conclude the flight while the keenest of avgeeks
enjoy the view out the window as the slats, spoilers and flaps, ah, flap about.
The wing on the modern airliner really is a piece of art.
Certainly far more interesting than someone missing an ear or a lady staring at you from every direction.
Anyway, I was really keen to check out the Q suite for myself and it certainly lived up to expectations
It was actually quite amazing The seat itself is fantastic,
I don't know what magic they've used
but they've managed to make a suite private, yet not feel too claustrophobic and
fit four of them across the width of the airplane.
The food and drink, as you saw, was impressive. As I've come to expect with Qatar, the service was flawless.
My primary flight attendant and the chief flight attendant all came and introduced themselves at the start of the flight.
The meals were served and removed properly and drinks kept full. As I said earlier,
they are clearly very proud about the Q suite product and offered to make the double bread up for me
just so that I could take photos
Now in all seriousness,
and I'm not being paid to say this, you could add a centimeter to the seat width offer more expensive booze and fish eggs
and this would be a pretty reasonable first class product.
In fact, it does raise questions about Qatar's own A380 first-class product
so it'll be interesting to see what they do with that.
And by the way
The fantastic business class service continued on the ground with a separate customs queue in the arrival lounge.
Now as soon as you enter the main customs hall, immediately turn left towards the lounges and in there
I found my very own customs officer
And as always I'll be giving away the amenity kit to a subscriber
You've got 30 days to enter from when this video was published and all you need to do is comment below with the text
(QRAmenitykit) in brackets. Full details of the giveaway are in the video description below.
Thanks for watching this video of what was a fantastic flight
Make sure you check me out on Instagram and Facebook as well as check out my channel for many more aviation videos
And in the background here,
You can see a Qatar A330 and my review of that business class product will be online in a few weeks
So make sure you're subscribed
So YouTube lets you know. Safe travels and I'll see you another time. Coming up are the menus!