#8 out of 94 Airlines A minimum of 10 flight-reports within the past two years is required to appear in the rankings.
627 reviews
Welcome back! I recently took a trip to Nairobi, Kenya for an international conference, connecting with schools all over the world. It's my first time flying on Qatar Airways, let alone my first time to Africa and my first time transiting through Qatar's hub at Doha. Please stay tuned for all 4 trip reports, which will be published here by me soon!
We were told to arrive at 5pm since we were travelling in a group (just a small group this time - that means access to PNRs to mess around with seat selections!). Since we were travelling onward to Nairobi, our yellow fever vaccines and our Kenyan e-visa were also checked. Then, we quickly proceeded airside to realise that the terminal was pretty quiet, though most flights left later in the evening.
There was also this gigantic chess board which we spent a decent amount of time at, with movable pieces!
A common sight - a CX A359 headed to SYD. CX will be returning to its full schedule for SYD (4 daily) & MEL (3 daily) starting from NW23, which is really nice to hear!
Yes, Gate 5 again! (Same gate as my flight to Singapore back in 2019!)
Spolier alert: I arrived into this gate on another Qatar plane on my return flight!
These colourful display boards, which I really appreciate once again as they show you the departure time & weather forecast of the destination. Won't be that useful today though since most passengers are connecting via Doha.
You can also see that CX codeshares this QR flight (they actually have a good relationship with Qatar, and codeshare most of Qatar's flights too - including mine to NBO!)
Sadly, this gate had a horrible view so I wasn't able to take a full body shot of the aircraft I'll be on today. Anyways, it's A7-BOB, a 14 year old 777-300ER. This plane had originally been with Cathay Pacific, but due to Covid, CX returned these planes to their lessor and QR took over them instead. However, they did not change the configuration of these planes at all. More about the configuration later!
Pre-boarding started a FULL HOUR before departure, though the actual boarding process was done starting around 40 minutes before departure. As you can see, these business class seats are the exact same as the ones CX used to have on these planes.
Premium economy seats on the other hand, are now sold as Comfort + (available for around 1200 HKD for this 8 hour flight).
In total, this plane has 34 Economy Comfort + & 201 standard Economy seats.
My seat tonight is 64C for this 8-hour flight. This seat is essentially the same (again) as those found on Cathay's current 777-300ERs. Having only introduced them back in 2018, these are brand new and as expected. They feature an 11-inch responsive entertainment screen. There's also a storage compartment right under the TV & a foldable tray table.
Headphones were waiting at the seat. Just your average economy class headphones, though I've found them to be effective in reducing noise from the plane.
Unfortunately, Qatar did not maintain this plane well at all…despite having only entered their fleet back in 2021, it's already showing wear and tear after 2 years.
Safety card, which was in a pretty bad shape with scratches here and there…It's honestly sad to see how bad the maintenance of this plane is. More on that later.
This plane was loaded with the full ORYX ONE entertainment system (as opposed to a simplified version found on them in the past), and I've found it to be easy to use. It has movies, TV shows WITH EVEN FULL SEASONS, music albums and games. Well done Qatar!
It was my first time seeing the game "Who wants to be a millionare" on a plane!
They also had monopoly, but sadly, there can only be 2 human players max.
Of course there's Family Guy! No subtitles tonight though :(
The interactive map is also extremely detailed. There are useful functions/views that allow you to get information about the flight quickly.
7 hours and 51 minutes to Doha today! This page looks absolutely stunning & clean with Qatar's colours as the background.
Boarding was complete at around 19:10, 20 minutes ahead of schedule. My middle seat tactic worked this time & we got a free middle seat for ourselves, yay!
The crew came around the cabin, welcoming elites. It's nice how they kneel down to speak to you, even in Economy class! (I'm not elite enough to be greeted by them personally just yet though :(
They also distributed amenity kits, which had an eyemask, a pair of earplugs, a toothbrush and some socks. It's in this paper bag with a meaningful message on top.
Honestly, the flight was less crowded than I expected. The load factor was probably around 65-70%, as per confirmed by crew. (He did tell me every single DOH-HKG flight would be full to the brim though!)
The safety video was screened, as we pushed back on time.
We climbed out into the South China sea, towards Hainan, Thailand, Bangladesh and India, and eventually over Dubai into Doha.
We took off, and a drink & snack service started around 35 minutes after takeoff. I selected an apple juice to go with it.
The main meal arrived around 90 minutes after takeoff. I selected the Sweet Corn and fish rice with an appetiser (Pumpkin salad) and a dessert (Pineapple mouse). It fell below my expectations - there was not much sauce to the rice (which made it very dry), the pumpkins were still hard and tasteless, and the moose was straight up a bunch of tasteless syrup. However, the vegetables were of a good variety and the fish was nicely seasoned. At least they had metal cutlery, which was nicely wrapped!
I got myself some tea with lemon after the meal. Just a lemon wedge? Cmon Qatar, you can do better than this…
At least they served us a biscoff cookie alongside with it.
I also checked out the wifi. Even though this plane had super wifi, the promised 1-hour free package for Qatar Privilege Club members did not show up on the page (same case on my return flight too…), which was kinda disappointing as I expected wifi coming onto the plane. Be careful about this when you travel on Qatar!
At this point we were cruising at 34000 feet.
I also checked out the toilet, and found some trace of this plane's original owner…
Right over Bangladesh!
The cabin lights were turned off between meal services. However, the crew still came around once every now and then proactively to offer drinks.
I spent some time doing work with my schoolmates. The empty middle seat meant we could check the flight map from the middle screen! There was also a lot more room for us to place our stuff.
Of course, the map included a function showing where Makkah is, allowing Muslims to pray if they had to.
It's a long flight without much to see…
…with the exception of some cities we passed through. This should be Kolkata.
At this point, I noticed that the curtains between Economy Comfort + and Economy were open. Upon asking the crew, I decided to pay a visit to the Comfort + cabin and try out the premium economy seats.
Of course, being economy class, they had the same amenities as us.
The bulkhead rows had a lot of room, to say the least! These seats also come with a comfortable footrest, but the seatback was quite hard and uncomfortable (compared with the Economy class seats!)
The TV, which looks very old & is surprisingly smaller than the ones in Economy at 10.6 inches (it's because CX didn't refurbish the PEY section when they refurbished the Eco cabins back in 2018 to densify the cabin). They were laggy and the stand refused to hold up the screen.
The recline is quite generous. However, the recline of the seat didn't work well. More signs of horrible maintenance by QR! (side note: the eco seats had the same problems too). Personally, I wouldn't pay an extra 1200 HKD to sit in a seat with a worse IFE & broken recline. It's apparent as to why CX introduced a new PEY seat 4 years after this seat came out! (P.S. that passenger was stepping on the bulkhead with his shoe!)
I returned to my original seat and as you can see, the flight map does have a lot of different views & functions!
Including this window view…
Surprisingly, we were cruising at a lower altitude towards the latter part of our flight, going down to 32000 feet.
I of course had to pay a visit to the galley, and I spotted this ex-KA metal box in the galley…does QR not even have enough money to get new containers for these planes?
Anyways, I did more work after lots of exploring.
The 2nd meal started 2.5 hours before landing, which was another dinner (that's what happens when you fly West!) I picked "Stir-fried chicken in Oyster sauce". This time, the meal was a LOT better. The salad was flavourful (though I forgot what that was), the chicken was tender, the flavour of the main was rich and I loved how they had a variety of vegetables. The dessert (Lemon mousse) tasted much better, as it wasn't overly sweet. Now that is what I expected from Qatar!
We landed into Doha Hamad International Airport 20 minutes ahead of schedule.
And of course, we parked at a bus gate (a jetway doesn't feel like Doha does it?). That meant standing in the heat (it was 32 degrees celsius outside!)
We cleared transit security and passed by this iconic teddy bear on our way to our next flight. More in my upcoming 3 reviews!
Overall, Qatar Airways delivers a solid product, but nothing much apart from that. The seat is comfortable (credits to CX since they inherited the plane from CX, it's usually worse than this), the food was average and the IFE/wifi was decent. The crew were very nice too, though it was apparent that they were forced to deliver good service instead of doing it from the bottom of their heart. I would consider flying Emirates over Qatar even if EK is slightly more expensive (Blame the lack of competition!)
They really need to step up their maintenance as the entire cabin is completely worn out, I was shocked that a 14-year-old plane could be in such a bad condition, considering they only got their 777s from CX in 2021.
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 7 avis concernant 2 compagnies sur la ligne Hong Kong (HKG) → Doha (DOH).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est Cathay Pacific avec 8.4/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 8 heures et 42 minutes.
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3 Comments
Quite refreshing to finally see a review of an ex-CX QR 77W in economy, and certainly very interesting to see airlines like QR having menus featuring more local-style-ish meal options of their destinations to cater to the taste of their mostly-foreign customers (though as you experienced, those aren’t always up to standard).
Odd that the Super-WiFi didn’t offer 1 hour of free usage; I’ve always been able to access it on my past QR flights.
To avoid the possibility of offending anyone, though, I would suggest replacing the word “Islam” with “Muslim” at the part where you showed the arrow pointing to Makkah: Islam refers to the religion, while Muslim refers to those that practices it.
Other than that, well done for this review!
P.S. I shivered seeing that worksheet of binomial theorem; I remember really hating to learn that! ;)
I had hoped that the wifi would work so I could connect with my family
Thanks for sharing!
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