Review of Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Paris in Economy

This is the last segment of a round trip to Singapore via Doha.
CDG-DOH : QR38 (A330-300)
DOH - SIN : QR944 (A350-900)
SIN - DOH : QR943 (A350-900)
DOH - CDG : QR37 (A330-300) You are here
Curiously, there had been a mild security check when connecting on the way in, but there was none in the reverse direction. Could it be that the Qatari had doubts about the safety of flights originating from Paris towards the Arab world ?

This sculpture is also a slide whose ramps are a lot lower than those in SIN.

I admit not understanding the purpose of this giant worn teddy bear.

I understood that I should not address TAGHeuer if I wanted to buy this car

This was an ordinary Porsche Panamera

Is the message that your connecting flight’s gate is so far away that you may want to reach it by car ? It felt shorter than on the way in simply because I knew the distance this time, from experience in the absence of signage providing time or distance indications.

Kids are firmly in hand in the toilets in DOH,

… and there is strict gender equality when it comes to baby care.

We eventually reached a rather small boarding room after showing our BP and passport, where the seats were identified by boarding zone. There were enough seats for all…

… including when you were a couple trying to sit together next to a power port (there were few, but fewer were being used)

I failed to download my e-mails because the wifi throughput was too weak for that.
This was an internet access booth, with a high resistance keyboard and trackball which I did not find very ergonomic.

I had it display the home page of your favorite website, but it did not remain on for a long time after I had left.

Boarding started shortly after our arrival in the boarding room, in an orderly manner. We were in the back of the aircraft, and therefore in the first boarding zone.

Fuselage shot through the aerobridge’s window

The cabin had a 2-4-2 layout : QR does not charge for seat selection, which means that if you do not wait for the last moment, you can travel on an aisle-window seat pair.

But not as comfortably as you might hope, because you find again this massive IFE box, whose 18.5 cm width (let’s be accurate) take close to half of the space for your feet or your hand luggage.

The seat was actually somewhat wider (between armrests) than the 43 cm in the 777s of AF (and all other airlines which chose a dense 3-4-3 seat layout, like EK).

There was a non-negligible space beyond the armrest to the wall of the aircraft, too.

My IFE remote control and that of my wife’s, in order to have both sides in a single picture. They don’t make this kind of vintage thing anymore.

My right armrest had lost part of its cover. It was sloppy, but had no impact on comfort, because this is not where the arm would rest, due to the position of the seat. Whether that means that the maintenance of much more vital parts of the aircraft is also sloppy is anybody’s guess, but QR has never had an accident in its 20-year history.

The safety card both sides

This picture of the rear cabin should not fool you : the private jet feeling of the new and empty A350 of the previous flight was over, because the flight was nearly full, with in particular a group of probable Indians who were quite noisy. Two of them who had commandeered the seat pair in the row before ours were politely but firmly sent back to their seats further back in the center by a FA when the passengers who were supposed to be there had arrived.

Pushback about ten minutes after schedule

QR 788

Like on the way in, an A320 of Al Maha, a Saudi subsidiary of QR

Fly Dubai 738, slightly too far away for a decent picture

This entirely white 747 freighter puzzled me ; a picture taken at maximum magnification identified TC-MCL, belonging to MyCargo Airlines, an airline which is 49% Chinese (HNA group, which own Hainan Airlines) and 51% Turkish. Although she is in front of her, the QR A32x looks small in comparison.

I missed her landing as we were waiting to align on the runway, but my favorite search engine helped me identify this 738 as belonging to Air India Express.

The extremity of DOH’s terminal

Service began less than half an hour after takeoff

We did not take any alcoholic drink, but that was no reason for not taking pictures of the offering

Mrs. Marathon went so far as lifting this bottle up to identify this wine from Chile

This was the brandy available at the end of the meal

But meanwhile, there had been the meal, served this way. This was my selection :

After partial unwrapping – those who did not read my reports of the previous flights will note the metal silverware.

I don’t know if using so many capital letters made the dish more refined, but it was good.

Braised Lamb in Apricot & Cumin Sauce with Steamed Baby Potatoes with herb Butter and Peas & Carrots

My wife had chosen the « chicken rice » (announced orally, unlike the printed menu received on the flights to/from SIN). But what came was CHILI CHICKEN WITH RICE, all in capital letters, and that first word was a no-no for Mrs. Marathon whose tolerance level to spicy food is zero. Bad luck for her, and a demerit for QR.

She would have had to eat it faster than I, before December 13, 2016, whereas I could wait until February 13, 2017… on the probable condition that they remained deep frozen.

The landscape was initially masked by the cloud cover

And then appeared after an hour and a half of flight, when we were above the western part of Iran

The landscape was predominantly arid, but there was here enough water for lush fields

The air show provided a localization which was too shifted in time to be useful, and I used Google Earth and the time reference of the artificial lake seen later to identify later rivers upstream of Nesare, in the Iranian Kurdistan.

A dam at the confluence of the Ghezel Ozan River and one of its contributors, upstream from Nesare

A road left this town in the upper right of this picture

… to reach this isolated village

A long and barren valley

The lake of Kazemi dam

Kazemi Dam, a.k.a. Bukan Dam, initially named Cyrus Dam at its inauguration.

The FA had initially forgotten to come back with the coffee requested at the end of the meal, which was an opportunity to find response time to the call button which was a lot slower than on the way in.

The warning on the paper cups was legitimate : these coffees were scalding hot.

This flight back to France was a festival of air to air picture opportunities, with this aircraft flying in the opposite direction

Readers of the French version of this report suggested that this aircraft could be a delayed Jet Airways flight (they leave LHR, AMS and CDG around 11 am), or possibly a TG or LH aircraft. I had failed to take a better picture, due to the distance.

Urmia’s salt lake, south-west of Tabriz, in the far western tip of Iran

The causeway and bridge (said to be heavily corroded by the saltwater) which crosses the lake, linking the cities of Tabriz and Urmia.

The mountains at the Iranian-Turkish border

After the largest Iranian lake came the largest Turkish lake.

This was the lake of Van, in Turkish Kurdistan

A curiously helical bay, and just afterwards, west of it

…Mount Süphan, a 4,058 m high volcano

The diminutive Lake Nazik, around twenty kilometers from the Lake of Van.

The plane then flew above a mountainous terrain, following a trajectory which was nearly parallel and to the Black Sea coast, about a hundred kilometers south of it.

Only well after I had reached my destination did I discover that my phone that I had inadvertently left switched on had established contact with a Turkish operator.

The colored lighting of the cabin

The second meal was as disappointing as that of the other flights.

There is story behind the ensuing pictures. My taking of countless pictures had been noticed by the FA who served us. It must have puzzled her because after some three hours of flight, she came up and asked me with an exquisite smile and politeness why I was taking so many pictures of the most mundane details. I explained about Flight Report (she had heard about the website), and reassured her about my likely evaluation of her performance and of the rest of the crew.
Mr. (or Mrs.) Supervisor of the Flight Attendants serving the rear of the aircraft on this flight (I had observed what was going on in the other aisle), if you ever read this report, I go on the record to state that they have been up to the most demanding standards, with regards to the welcome on board, the handling of these passengers in the wrong seats and of the meal service.
Furthermore, and although I never take this as a factor in my evaluation of FAs, my wife and I admired both her beauty and her makeup skills.
She nevertheless stopped afterwards at our row to pose with these trays of water and then coffee, after a skillful split second millimetric readjustment of all the items. She was obviously careful now she knew that every single detailed would be recorded.

The air show displayed both the great circle trajectory and the actual flight path.

The cabin seen from the rear, with the 2-3-2 layout of the last rows because of the narrowing of the fuselage

Air-to-air with an aircraft flying in the same direction …

And, more unusual, with two aircraft flying in nearly opposite directions

The distance and the lighting conditions made it impossible to identify them

It was not over yet :

This four engine aircraft flew by in the opposite direction close enough

… to identify a 747 from her hump. I was suggested that the livery could be that of Air Bridge Cargo.

There would be nothing more to see outside until landing in CDG. It was no surprise that there be a Kuwait Airways A330 at Terminal 1 like when on the way in.

The rain and the night precluded any additional plane spotting

We deplaned at 21:18, i.e. ETA + 38’. The aircraft was A7-AFL, which had entered revenue service in 2004.

There was a long line for European passport holders, but the PARAFE passport and fingerprint automated booths were a welcome shortcut for those who could use them (you need a EU passport, and register it in advance in the airport if is not French, so infrequent visitors in France are unlikely to have validated theirs)

Going up the distinctive tubes of Terminal 1

I had not noticed this Rapid Transfer tag when we had checked in in DOH. Our suitcase arrived 23 minutes after our deplaning, which was commendable in CDG where luggage delivery is notoriously slow.

Leaving CDG1 by train was not any more pleasant than on the way in : a transfer on the CDG-VAL people mover, then buying a ticket (for me) and validating a monthly pass (for my wife) wasted precious time because of a machine which did not work (all our credit cards were rejected), and we narrowly missed a direct train to Paris. The train parked left was not going anywhere.

We were going to wait for that KISS (the train’s code, which for insiders provides its mission) for a long time: around half an hour on that bleak platform, with no other information than the “train delayed” words on the screen.

In Singapore, we had been up exactly 6 steps from our hotel to the airport, namely the six steps which protect all subway station outside exits from floods like in Taipei. All other going up or down had been with escalators or lifts.

In Paris, the total was 50 steps up and 23 steps down, taking a longer route with more escalators. (The 23 steps down were because of a stopped escalator …). Our 25 kg suitcase had never felt so heavy !
This is the end of this Flight Report, and since I do not have any unpublished matter on Doha or Paris, I now propose a tourist bonus on Singapore, since this had been our destination for that whole trip. Singapore is a city which is much more multi-faceted than some could imagine, like this heterogeneous urban landscape.

You could of course go and visit the Singapore Zoo, but you could also visit the unique Night Safari : this is another zoo which is visited at night only, in order to see nocturnal animals in their active life setting. The artificial lighting is similar to that of a full moon night, which would require a camera much more sensitive than mine.

Babirusa (Babyrusa babyrusa)
When it is really motionless, a leopard (panthera pardus) can appear in realistic conditions.

The flamingoes were much too active at Night Safari, and I took this picture at superb Jurong Bird Park.

You can enter some of the bird cages, and some are so large that only by looking up to the sky can you see that you are in one. This Scheepmaker goura (Goura scheepmakeri) was spreading its wings to make itself bigger and convey the idea that it was at home there and would you please not take this footbridge.

There is no need to go to the nature preserves in the center and north of the island to see plenty of trees and flowers in Singapore, thanks to the equatorial climate. The footbridges above avenues in the city center overflow with flowers all year round.

The expressways look somewhat like wide countryside roads flaked with tall trees.

In the city center like in residential areas, there is a fee for parking your car, sometimes with electronic means, and sometimes with a rather archaic system of prepaid coupons that the driver punches according to the date and time before placing them on the dashboard. This saves the installation of thousands of parking meters, and makes sense in a city where the only cars are those of the residents: I have yet to see a Malaysian car in Singapore, and if you own a car in Singapore, surely you have a few spare parking coupons.

Maybe this driver was out of coupons, and maybe he thought he would get away with failing to display any : if this was his first offense (since how much time, I do not know), he would have received a warning only.

On the other hand, I doubt that this policewoman was equally merciful to the driver of that other car: because he had parked illegally on a bus parking space in front of Tian Hock Keng Temple, he had forced the driver of the bus in the background to stop in a traffic lane to unload his passengers.

This car was not being used illegally, because I took this picture on a Sunday : its red plate means that it cannot be used on weekdays between 7 am and 7 pm, unless a 20 SGD fee is paid. These “week-end cars” are relatively rare, because the 17,000 SGD rebate on the COE (« Certificate of Entitlement », the document which allows a 10-year ownership of a car of a given category) does not compensate the non-weekday constraint. (COEs are auctioned each month, and the going price varies a lot according to the offer and demand, but is around 80,000 SGD for a small car).

The sticker right of the number plate of this taxi means that this taxi driver honors the memory of Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015), the man who « made Singapore ».

The birth rate in Singapore is low, and the authorities have been worrying about it for decades, with occasional eugenic hints. This advertising campaign (by a NGO, but unlikely to go against official policies) encourages couples to not to delay their children goals, because fertility decreases with age, whether you are male on the right side of this taxi

… or female on the other side.

Protecting a pedestrian crossing with a traffic light is a good thing. But if it is a wide avenue, a handicapped person may not have enough time to make it to the other side… except here, with a dedicated badge, you can have a longer green signal to cross the street. The technology behind has been available for several decades; all which was needed was to have the idea and install it.

Safety in Singapore also goes through prevention, with a safety check of bulk luggage at the entrance of all subway stations. (When did it start ? I do not remember seeing that in 2014). When we left to the airport though, the staff targeted our hand luggage, which was a lot easier to handle, possibly because he needed to show that he had checked part of our luggage without too much harassment (he only made a cursory visual check after lifting a couple items).

Prevention is also advertising campaigns : I had seen a similar one in 2014, with different pictures, but the themes were the same, warning against various internet frauds, and against offers too good to be honest.

« It happened in the vicinity » : this sign next to a suburban subway station warns that there has been a victim of an internet sex scam in the neighborhood.

Singapore’s police has a branch dedicated to prevention work. They are recognizable by their white shirts, unlike the blue shirts of their other colleagues, and reach out to the general public to warn them against possible risks.

These policemen came up to us spontaneously, because they were targeting women and elderly people (the presence of my wife made me hope that the second criterion had been a factor :). They were especially friendly and willing to explain their mission.

They were distributing these goodies to the people that they engaged (mostly women, because this was a typical end of office work time) : a notepad in a plastic holder warning against loan sharks (ah-long 阿窿 in Singlish), and a small anti aggression torch which would emit a very loud beep if the holding cord was pulled out.

Such is life in Singapore, where the prosperity is also based on the absence of a minimum wage, but which nevertheless attracts many foreign workers guaranteeing a low cost of lesser qualified manpower. In this country with a very high standard of living, I had an ordinary haircut for a standard 10 SGD (6 EUR), vs. a bare minimum 10 EUR in Paris. The hairdresser spoke with her colleague in Mandarin with an accent which was unusual to me: she was Malaysian (and shifted to Malay when she realized that I could follow her conversation). She probably belonged to the throngs of Malaysians who shuttle every day from Johor Baru, on the other side of the bridge.

Many Singaporeans can afford to travel abroad, thanks in part to dynamic LCCs which are not penny-pinching when it comes to advertising, like here in a major subway station.

A hint for our next vacation destination ?

Thanks for reading me all the way to here !