An important announcement for readers: I’m taking a break from here for a few months
This will likely be my final trip report on this website for the foreseeable future, at least until the end of 2025. I have secured admission to IIM Bangalore, one of India’s most prestigious business institutes, for its two-year management programme after a gruelling and intensely competitive months-long process. As a result I will leave Singapore, my home of 7 years, permanently in the first week of June 2025 and shift to Bengaluru in southern India, to the IIMB campus, near where my parents live.
I did a lot of flying in the first half of 2025 — including 8 new airlines in May 2025 alone (see spoiler) across the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan (plus a transit in South Korea) — as a kind of final farewell to my current free-spirited travelling days. However, the first few months of the IIM programme will be so academically intense that I’ll barely have any time to sleep, let alone write about my travel experiences for some months to come. Might as well make my final report (for now) about one — actually two — of the finest airlines in the world!
(I was also supposed to fly Starlux on its A350-900 in Business Class — the acclaimed Collins Elements seat — but unfortunately needed to cancel it at the last moment. Well, there’s always next time! As for Korean Air itself — the last major non-Mainland Chinese airline in Northeast Asia — I will wait for the Asiana brand to come to a well-deserved end in 2027 before flying the revamped KE.)
Not to mention multiple flights on Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Malaysia Airlines and Air India (ex-Vistara aircraft), including Business Class on the first three and Premium Economy on the fourth. There were also, for what it’s worth, some random flights on Batik Air Malaysia, Jetstar Asia, Thai Airways — all narrowbodies, including TG’s A320 — and even, for once, my arch-enemy Scoot on its 787-8.
Not to worry, though. My final departure from Singapore in early June 2025 will be in my classic roundabout fashion: Singapore Airlines in First Class (!!!) to Jakarta, followed by my favourite SriLankan Airlines in Business Class to Colombo and onward to my final destination, Bengaluru. Talk about a grand finale to my flying journey of 2022–25!
A fair word of warning: Due to its historic importance and sensitive nature, I’m putting the pictures of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the Travelling Bonus at the end of this report — and leaving out the more disturbing ones. A haunting reminder of just what this country, Cambodia, went through nearly five decades ago… and, on the bright side, how resiliently its people have reinvented themselves in the 21st century.
Also, while the focus of this report is naturally the Qatar Airways fifth-freedom flight, there was also a connecting flight on Singapore Airlines from Ho Chi Minh City back to Singapore. In light of its rather insignificant nature, whatever pictures were there from it have been shoehorned into the end of the Travelling Bonus section, after the above museum pictures.
On with the report: Resuming where we left off in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
As stated in the previous instalment, flying the Singapore Airlines 737 MAX to Phnom Penh (PNH), Cambodia, and returning on Qatar Airways’ fifth-freedom route to Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), Vietnam, was my main raison d’être to travel to the Southeast Asian kingdom in early November 2024. Of course, Cambodia has an easy e-visa process, like Indonesia and — if yours is processed on time — Vietnam, so that factored in too. (Phnom Penh itself turned out to be such a fascinating and multicultural, cosmopolitan city, punching much, much above its weight…)
Not to mention the fact that QR doesn’t have a lot of fifth-freedom routes, unlike KLM or Ethiopian (which I’ve flown twice each) — or for that matter Emirates, which serves Phnom Penh via Singapore instead of Ho Chi Minh City. I’d never flown this most high-profile, loud-mouthed member of Oneworld before, though I did fly Gulf Air’s fifth-freedom route from Bangkok to Singapore on the 787-9 in November 2023, but this was scrapped in October 2024.
(It seems some airlines don’t love their Singapore fifth-freedom routes any more, with Cathay Pacific scrapping BKK–SIN in March 2025, just a year after launching it — though at least I did manage to fly that too — and Emirates axing its Singapore to Melbourne route, which was around since 1996!)
Now I must mention that, being the avgeek I am, flying the fifth-freedom route from PNH to SGN was easily one of the single biggest motivators for this journey. However, thanks to a major oversight on my part — not securing a visa for Vietnam (the Vietnamese government didn’t need one for transit, but Qatar Airways absolutely did) — it wasn’t all smooth sailing. I ended up having to postpone my return by a day, and spent a huge amount of money rebooking both flights (QR PNH–SGN and SQ SGN–SIN) plus securing a short-term Vietnam visa via a third-party agency. More details in the spoiler of the previous instalment, since I’m not going to rehash those things again here.
Flight routing
- 1
- 2QR971 and SQ185 | Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City to Singapore | 4 November 2024 | 777-300ER A7-BAN and 787-10 9V-SCO
So how was flying Qatar Airways on this unique roughly-45-minute sector? In three words: mediocre, yet exciting. Confused? I’ll explain.
You see, at the time of this flight, Oneworld’s most influential member sent its old, non-Qsuite-fitted 777-300ER on the QR970/971 (DOH–SGN–PNH) route. Previously QR deployed its ex-Virgin Australia 777-300ERs (A7-BOE–BOG) on the route, which have a fairly decent onboard product in both Business and Economy, but this stopped in October 2024 and QR switched to exclusively flying 777-300ERs with the ancient B/E Minipod business-class product with 2-2-2 seating that’s a relic of a bygone era. Nowadays (summer 2025), however, it deploys the Qsuite-equipped 777-300ER more often than not on this sector, which is fabulous to say the very least.
It shows just how QR is an airline of extreme contrasts: you have what is by many metrics the world’s best business-class product, the Qsuite, on all A350-1000s, most 777-300ERs and -200LRs and many A350-900s. But you also have an absolutely awful and woefully incompetent product like this, the Minipod, on so much of the fleet, including these 777s and all the ancient A330s. And then you have products in between: the older 787-8s with their mediocre Business cabin, the newer 787-9s with their almost-Qsuitelevel–good Adient Ascent suites, and the A320s with their mishmash of cool lie-flats and very inferior recliners. (I’ve written a bit more about QR’s dichotomy in the spoiler below.)
The worst part: QR has been terrible in terms of managing expectations, because you never know which route may be served by the Qsuite 777-300ER one day but swapped to an ancient aircraft the next. Countless travellers have cried foul and sworn never to fly QR again, Skytrax awards and glowing blogger/influencer reviews be damned. Naturally, I had low expectations of the hard product at the back of the bus, especially with the old-school dark grey bezels around the IFE screen. And yet, even on this supposedly older aircraft (built 2011) on a short 45-minute hop, QR’s soft product was well above average and worth the relatively high price of S$250 or US$180.
There were some colourful amenity kits (in Economy!) themed after Tokyo, Delhi and Barcelona; the juice by way of catering was refreshingly different; and the IFE selection — particularly the unending paeans on all the arms of the Qatar Airways Group — was nothing if not elaborate. As soon as the 777 was in the air, my 45-minute countdown to explore as many facets of the airline’s massive empire started, and I squeezed the very most out of those 45 minutes by checking out EVERY. SINGLE. MENU. in the About Us section of the Oryx One system. All-in-all, when I got down from the exit door with its African flight attendant, I was feeling victorious — if a little bummed about the expensive Vietnam visa fiasco — but mostly elated!
However — and I will say this again during the review — QR is perhaps the most arrogant, boastful and haughty airline in the world. It’s full of itself, its head well and truly stuffed with its own success. It knows it’s so much better than the competition on a select few routes, only to woefully disappoint one time too many, thanks to ancient aircraft like my 777-300ER and the awful, ancient A330s being swapped on key routes. Its home airport, Hamad, is one of the most grossly overrated transportation hubs in the world. Anyone who can’t afford Gucci glasses, Chanel clutches and Dior dresses will likely be sorely disappointed by its bus gates and lack of affordable amenities. Akbar al-Baker may no longer be the chief — stepping down and being replaced by Badr Mohammed al-Meer, who feels refreshingly different — but every part of the airline bears the stamp of his signature uncompromising behaviour. And that’s both a good and a bad thing.
TL;DR: On a good day Qatar Airways is an outstanding experience; on a bad day, it can be a nightmare. I certainly wouldn’t say that for Air France, Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific, despite them not having as sexy or glamorous a Business product as the Qsuite. (First Class is a different story altogether.) AF, SQ and CX (or ANA or JAL — or Etihad, if you want another Arabic airline) are a masterclass in modesty while still being luxurious where it counts the most, on almost every plane.
A blessing in the nick of time: Getting the (needless) Vietnam visa in order
Monday, 4 November, morning. The third-party Vietnam visa agency was as good as its word, and indeed had sent an email saying that it would be issued by noon Vietnam time. They also strongly recommended that I get travel insurance, and also required me to get two photos taken, a form printed and USD 25 cash ready. None of this would be needed in the end at Ho Chi Minh City’s airport — but this was the only way to placate the Qatar Airways check-in officials at PNH!
Speaking of Qatar Airways, my aircraft, as per Flightradar24, was going to have the startling registration of A7-BAN. Good thing I wasn’t ‘banned’ from taking the flight this time around!
I left my room — hastily arranged the previous evening after returning from the airport — and set out for the colourful, chaotic but cosmopolitan streets of Cambodia’s capital, filled with older Toyotas and new Teslas in equal measure. There was never a dull moment for the eyes between all the old booths and new boutiques!
At length, I chanced upon an Indian grocery store, an unlikely find in this foreign country, and made sure to buy a couple of things from there. Oh, the joy of seeing the familiar Indian boxes of MDH masala (spices), jars of Amul ghee (clarified butter) and bottles of Dabur Amla hair oil! It sure makes me proud to be returning to India for some time, after a seven-year sojourn in Singapore.
Then I was off to a few other places, including (for each collage, left to right):
1. The headquarters of ABA Bank, one of the largest banks in Cambodia, where I withdrew some US dollars in cash to be shown for the Vietnam visa.
2. A busy thoroughfare, with the headquarters of Cellcard, one of the country’s three largest telcos, in addition to luxury stores like Charles & Keith.
3. A quaint little old-school photo studio on that busy road, where I got my picture taken and sent to me via Telegram (the app, I mean!).
4. Moreover, I had to fill in my details and sign the Vietnam visa permission form which I’d printed here.
After that I went to my final stop for the day, none other than the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which I’ve covered in the Travelling Bonus at the end.
After the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a final trip to the airport
After a little more than an hour at the Genocide Museum, I was tired of the afternoon heat — more than the depictions of all the horrifying experiences inside — and had a nice, chilled mango juice from a nearby café.
This done, I hopped on two more Toyota Priuses (XW20 series, 2004–09) in this country dominated by that particular generation of the popular hybrid. Once to collect my luggage from my Airbnb apartment, and again to head all the way to Phnom Penh International Airport — barely 10 km west of the city centre, but still a 45-minute drive! In that time you can reach the airports serving Bangkok, Jakarta or even Taipei from the city centre, which are all a good 35–40 km away…
Again I was enthralled by the ecletic streets and stores, and the exotic cars and commercial vehicles. As I noted:
The Cadillac Escalade: perhaps the only country in Southeast Asia where you’ll find it… and the Ford Transit, a quintessentially Vietnamese vehicle.
There’s nary a Cadillac in Southeast Asia — other than in this country that’s technically poor, but with an outsized number of rich people who import such American models, including Chinese-made ones like the Ford Territory. Meanwhile the Ford Transit is found all over Vietnam, but it tends to be the older generation; this newer one was a rare find here.
And then there were such luxury brands as Fendi and Armani Exchange, which really speaks to the growing purchasing power of Cambodians — or at least the rich elite!
As we approached the airport I saw a Qatar Airways 777 landing… but no, that wasn’t my plane! Mine (A7-BAN) had already landed just a short while ago, and instead this was A7-BFJ, a cargo 777.
One last little dose of nostalgia as I entered the airport gate: a good ol’ 2001/02 Toyota Corolla, the same kind that you’d see in India over a decade ago — only to be followed right after by a spanking-new Kia EV6! Yes, I’m indulging my inner car lover a little too much here… on an aviation and travel website!
No rejection this time: (Unnecessary) Vietnam visa saves the day
At length, the old-is-gold Prius turned into the airport driveway, and I made my way inside the pretty(,) cool-looking departure building. Most flights here are international anyway, as the only other airports in Cambodia are Siem Reap (SAI) — home of the Angkor Wat — and Sihanoukville (KOS), the main port city.
I turned right and headed to the same Qatar Airways check-in counters that had turned me away just 24 hours earlier. I’d gone through a lot of effort and parted with a lot of cash to show that Vietnam visa to the check-in staff, and this time I made it in — whoo!
I might mention here that QR is one of two airlines that absolutely insists on putting the Oneworld logo to the left of its own, with the other being Malaysia Airlines. Every other OW airline I’ve seen — Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, SriLankan, JAL, etc. — puts the Oneworld logo to the right of its own, as any SkyTeam member would do. Why do QR and MH need to be different and stick out like a sore thumb?
Next door was the check-in for Xiamen Air, the secondary SkyTeam member from China. There were quite a number of eyecatching departures, and when you included the codeshares — Lufthansa, Finnair, Virgin Australia, etc. — they were very diverse indeed.
Of these, Etihad Airways will launch 5x weekly flights to PNH from October 2025 with the Airbus A321LR. This makes it the only one of the big ME3 carriers to serve it nonstop from its hub, instead of via Singapore (Emirates) or Ho Chi Minh City (Qatar).
This is along with a bunch of other East Asian cities, including Hong Kong — astonishingly not served by EY until now — and Taipei (which EK serves but QR does not), as well as Medan, Chiang Mai and Hanoi, but not Ho Chi Minh City.
Another Sinophone SkyTeam carrier — but not one from the Mainland (you can figure out that for yourself) — also had a long check-in line. This being one of those airports with the check-in counters on the same level as the arrival gates — and one level below the security, immigration and departure area — I took the escalator up.
(In May 2025 I encountered two such terminals in East Asia: Fukuoka (FUK), Japan, and Taipei/Taoyuan (TPE) Terminal 1, Taiwan.)
The said China Airlines aircraft with a full load of passengers — a mere 737-800 — was about to land after a three-hour journey, along with an Indonesia AirAsia special-liveried A320. As I mentioned in my caption, the security screening was as delay-free as could be, having gulped down two small bottles of water.
Thereafter came Phnom Penh Duty Free, which is run by Dufry — which means all-pervasive ads for Club Avolta. Funnily enough the ‘Spirit of Cambodia’ section at the end did not have, well, spirits; instead it had souvenirs and handicrafts from the length and breadth of the country.
All the departures were within the region, except for — astonishingly enough — a Cambodia Angkor Air (now Air Cambodia) flight to the Pacific island nation of Palau! I know that China Airlines serves the archipelago’s only international airport, Roman Tmetuchl International Airport (ROR), due to its relative proximity to the Philippines — but Cambodia?!
Apparently, Cambodia Angkor Air started seasonal service from Hong Kong to Palau in December 2023, and this lasted until October 2024. The K6680 flight number, which was originally PNH–HKG–ROR, has been solely PNH–HKG since then… but this flight was in November, so what happened to it? I guess I’ll never know!
I didn’t spend too long in the duty-free area, with its Amazing Cambodia product display, instead heading straight to the gates.
There she was, ready and waiting, at Gate 8 beside a shiny new Relay bookshop. After so much tension the previous day (and money spent thereafter), I was finally going to fly Qatar Airways — I couldn’t be more excited! After a brief look at the books in the Relay store, and the China Airlines 737, I proceeded to the gate where there weren’t too many people waiting.
A heritage of hospitality, seen in every smile, and the slogan Going places together at the bottom. One wouldn’t know, going by that standee, that QR is as arrogant as it is excellent — a proud and haughty airline that thinks no end of itself!
The flight: Boarding and departure
Flight: Qatar Airways QR971/QTR971
Date: Sunday, 3 Monday, 4 November 2024
Route: Phnom Penh–Pochentong (VDPP/PNH) to Ho Chi Minh City–Tan Son Nhat (VVTS/SGN) — the flight then continued to Doha Hamad (OTHH/DOH)
Aircraft: A7-BAN, Boeing 777-300ER (non-Qsuite)
Age: 13 years 7 months at the time (built: 14 March 2011, delivered: 1 April 2011)
Seat: 25K (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 4:50pm Indochina Time (ICT), UTC +7
Departure: 5:10pm ICT
Arrival: 6:10pm ICT
Duration: 1 hour
Notes:
• First flight on Qatar Airways and fourth Oneworld airline flown, after Malaysia Airlines (2022, 2024 and several times in 2025), SriLankan Airlines (4 times in 2023, once later in November 2024) and Cathay Pacific Airways (twice each in 2023 and 2024; later, 4 times in March 2025). With a daytime flight (UL307) on SriLankan’s ancient A320 later in November, I was able to fly all four of these Oneworld airlines in a single year.
In May 2025 I added a fifth Oneworld airline — JAL — to my flight history, on the domestic A350 sector from Fukuoka to Tokyo Haneda, and in Class J (domestic premium economy) at that!
• Fifth Boeing 777-300ER flight, after two on Emirates Airline (June 2022), one on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (June 2023) — in the SkyTeam livery! — and another on Thai Airways (August 2024, in the Tourism Bonus section). Despite being one of the most popular beasts in the sky today, I’ve barely flown the 777-300ER compared to its older, uglier twin, the -200ER — though I did add a 777-300ER flight on EVA Air in May 2025, followed by First Class on Singapore Airlines (only to Jakarta, though) in June 2025.
• Third Middle Eastern airline flown, after Emirates Airline on four occasions in 2022 and 2024, and Gulf Air in 2023. Of the ‘big three’ ME3 airlines, I’m yet to fly Etihad Airways, since all its flights are to or from Abu Dhabi (AUH), with no fifth-freedom routes like this one and Emirates’ EK348/349 service between Singapore and Phnom Penh.*
*However, I’m mighty impressed by Etihad’s brand image and typography, as it’s easily one of the best in the world — despite stiff competition from Qatar, Gulf Air (also among the best), the rebranded Saudia, the upcoming Riyadh Air and (of course) the OG, Emirates.
Heck, I’m not sure if I will even fly Qatar Airways again in the near future, as almost all of its flights (barring this PNH–SGN fifth-freedom) are to or from Doha! Still, the airline remains involved in other ways, like redeeming business-class tickets on Cathay Pacific using Qatar Avios (which I did in late March 2025)… or visiting the phenomenal Qatar Premium Lounge at Changi Airport Terminal 1, which I did in April 2025 as part of the so-called ‘Oneworld lounge safari’ at Changi.
It goes without saying that this business-class cabin was not one of Qatar Airways’ proudest moments, and remains an embarrassment for an airline that is otherwise so proud of its world-beating Qsuite product. All the more so when Emirates Airline, arch-rival number one, refuses to install any better than its outdated, privacy-lacking A380 business-class seats on its new A350, all while most of EK’s 777 fleet is in an outrageously bad 2-3-2 layout — though at least it’s announced a refitment of that fleet.
At least, though, Emirates has a uniformly bad-to-mediocre Business product across its fleet; with QR, on the other hand, either you win the lottery or you lose everything!
The slimline 777-300ER seats in Economy were a bit reminiscent of what I’d seen on that magical KLM SkyTeam-liveried 777-300ER to Denpasar in June 2023. The charcoal-grey bezels, on the other hand, gave away that this wasn’t the most cutting-edge aircraft out there — and the moving map was especially out of date — though at least the display resolution was pretty okay. Given that Qatar Airways, like most other Gulf carriers except Etihad, has eliminated its Oryx magazine, there was not much to look forward to in the seat pockets…
…but wait! What was the cabin crew handing out? Amenity kits?! Yes, three of them, no less — orange for Tokyo, red for Delhi and violet for Barcelona! Which other airline hands out amenity kits in Economy, that too on this sub-1-hour sector in Southeast Asia?!
In any case, I immediately got cracking with pictures of, well, the glittering-glamming but (rather small) capital city of Doha, where four in five people in Qatar live. Meanwhile the lead cabin crew made their welcomes and announcements, all of them in English — no Khmer, no Vietnamese, and certainly no Arabic. Singapore Airlines is the only airline I fly with any regularity where all announcements are English-only, except maybe for some automated ones.
At this point Myrtel Rose, a flight attendant from (no prizes for guessing) the Philippines — no wonder PH loves to send so many girls to work as FAs in the Gulf — came around with a carton of Vinamilk orange juice and a glass of Sprite. I wasn’t expecting much more from a flight less than an hour, so kudos to QR for that pre-departure beverage service. None of QR’s signature karak chai or lemon-mint cooler, though!
She later came around before taxiing out and asked me to ‘close the tray tables before landing‘, at which point I smilingly corrected her and said ‘Takeoff, Ma’am!’
My 777, as per Planespotters.net, had recently become a ‘teenager’ — built in March 2011 — which was also the case with the SkyTeam-coloured KLM 777-300ER in June 2023, as that one was built in 2009. Looking around me on Flightradar24, I noticed Emirates’ 777-300ER halfway between Singapore and PNH on EK348, as well as SQ’s 737 MAX on the same sector (SQ158) a little behind. Moreover, 9V-SCO, a 787-10 Dreamliner, was heading to Ho Chi Minh City as SQ186 and would shortly pick me up from there on the connecting flight, SQ185.
There was also a fascinating flight for avgeeks: Vietnam Airlines’ VN920, with an absolutely intriguing routing connecting Vietnam’s two largest cities with the Cambodian and Laotian capitals. From Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), the largest city in Vietnam, it would shortly land here at Phnom Penh (PNH), before moving to Vientiane (VTE), the capital of Laos, and ending at Vietnam’s capital Hanoi (HAN).
Another interesting flight it operates is VN930, from Siem Reap (SAI), Cambodia, to Luang Prabang (LPQ), Laos — the biggest major tourist destinations in those two countries — before continuing to HAN.
And now Qatar Airways’ safety video at the time, entitled Postcards from Qatar to the world, was played. Every destination showed a different safety feature, and they were interspersed with a postcard from Qatar itself. Typical rich-people destinations — London, Maldives, Sydney, Los Angeles — were mixed with somewhat offbeat cities like Cape Town, South Africa, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, before ending with ‘There’s no place like Qatar’. How much are you going to brainwash me? I wondered inwardly, before realising that yes, there’s no place like Qatar — a dream for the top 5% of locals, but misery for thousands of others!
After this was screened another video for taking care of devices with lithium batteries from falling out of the seat. Both these videos had English audio and Arabic subtitles, in contrast to many other airlines which alternate audio tracks between English and their native language in their safety videos.
(Garuda Indonesia takes the opposite approach, with Bahasa Indonesia audio and English subtitles. Despite belonging to the rival SkyTeam alliance, GA partners with QR and also has a flight to DOH, despite its severely limited international network otherwise.)
I should also mention that QR introduced a new safety video with Kevin Hart the following month (December 2024), which clearly has a focus on humour and entertainment. Indeed, it directly takes potshots at EK’s new no-nonsense safety video, which explains the essentials in a straightforward way, instead slamming it as ‘flat-out boring’ and ‘unimaginative’. Yeah, I have a hard time agreeing with that, QR…
Thereafter I had a dekko at the movies section of Oryx One — and I must say, the Bollywood part, at least, skewed heavily towards arthouse movies with very little by way of blockbusters. What a headscratcher, given QR’s heavy pull from the Indian subcontinent…
At this point we were ready for takeoff, and taxied past the 737s from SkyTeam carriers — Xiamen and China Airlines — before meeting the A320s of the local private carriers, Cambodia Airways and Sky Angkor Airlines, plus the entire fleet (just two A320s!) of AirAsia Cambodia.
Before long A7-BAN deployed her flaps and whooshed above, bringing a memorable end to a delightful — though expensive — stay in Cambodia, but at least one that managed to end on this exotic Qatari note!
This airline is the polar opposite of humble — and how!
No sooner were we airborne than I delved into every possible nook and cranny of the About Qatar Airways section of the IFE. My word, was I simultaneously impressed and incensed by the sheer audacity with which QR described every aspect of its operations! I expected no less from an airline that has never shied away from speaking out loud (with generally brilliant results, make no mistake) — and this was, in no uncertain terms, a reflection of that visionary loudmouth: its ex-chief Akbar al-Baker. (Full resolution here.)
Given that Qatar Airways is such a braggart, it would also be well in order to flex some of its tie-ups and partnerships, like free and unlimited Starlink Wi-Fi. Indeed, QR is currently the only non-Western airline to have Starlink! All other Starlink-equipped airlines are from North America (like United), Europe (like Air France, airBaltic and SAS) or — in the case of Air New Zealand (though only domestic flights) — Oceania.
One good initiative, though, from such a moneyed and rolling-in-dough airline is its support for Educate A Child, a programme by Education Above All — as you see in the below gallery’s second and third pictures. This has a worldwide reach, covering kids in not only the most expected region — Africa — but also the Indian subcontinent (particularly Afghanistan), Latin America, Southeast Asia and many other underprivileged societies.
Then I proceeded to other screens in that massive, sprawling section: (a) Privilege Club and the Oneworld alliance; (b) Hamad International Airport, which (thankfully) lost its World’s Best Airport crown in 2025 to Changi; © the various luxury features of the renowned Al Safwa First Lounge; (d) Qatar Duty Free and Al Maha Services; (e) Qatar Executive, the private-charter division of the airline.
But that also means endless bragging and boasting: look-at-us-we’re-the-best, our-Qsuite-is-the-best — yes, the Qsuite really is awesome, no doubt; but so are its Oneworld partners’ brand-new Business products (Cathay’s Aria Suite and JAL’s A350-1000 Safran Unity seat) — and Hamad-is-the-best-airport-in-the-world. I take grave issue with that last statement: I firmly believe DOH is an airport built by billionaires and influencers, for billionaires and influencers, basically anyone with five-figure dollar values to throw as spare change at Armani, Burberry, Coach or Dior boutiques. For the rest of us, the travelling public, be prepared to schlep from one gate to another by bus, and eat at overpriced restaurants with bills running into hundreds of QAR.
I cannot for the life of me understand why Ben Schlappig of OMAAT ranks Hamad as one of his three favourite airports, alongside Changi and HKG. And it’s not like Oneworld Emerald will get you into the Al Safwa Lounge, as it will the CX Pier First lounge at HKG or the Qantas First Class lounges at SYD or SIN…
TL;DR: a genuinely great (if proud and haughty) airline, but an immensely overrated airport. I will never agree with Ben Schlappig’s defence of DOH as one of the most beautiful and most pleasing airports on Earth. Feel free to respectfully disagree with me if you happen to love Hamad!
Having had enough of all the boasting and gloating, I moved on to more intimately personal — and I don’t mean that in a romantic way! — pages of the About Qatar Airways mega-section that profiled some of the people and organisations who’ve made it the goliath that it is. Of these, probably my favourite was the Qatari musician Dana Al Fardan, who has composed a number of soulful boarding-music pieces for QR. She has, I must say, done a spectacular, marvellous job of it, more than any other individual composer for an airline.
For a country that’s only become famous over the past three or so decades — largely thanks to its material riches — it’s important to highlight the cultural heritage and prowess that Qatar has beyond the typical luxurious, manicured Instagrammable things. Boarding music is one of those soft touches which people take note of, and it’s something that Etihad has also done beautifully. (I really, really love Etihad’s 2021 music, even more than QR’s perhaps!) Indeed Ben of OMAAT acknowledges the subtle importance of QR’s boarding music, as he writes (emphasis mine):
I also think it’s cool to see a Qatari woman who maybe doesn’t match the stereotype that people have in their head about the country and culture. Truth be told, I’ve now downloaded all kinds of music from Al Fardan, and I’m not even talking about the boarding music. Her music is simply beautiful — it’s calming and uplifting.
Moreover, this article also includes a video on Al Fardan, linked below, in which she explains how she is inspired by world folk traditions, Qatari culture and global influences when creating music. She speaks with an American accent, a bit surprising at first for a native Qatari. It’s only fitting that for someone whose best compositions are all in the key of D minor (my favourite musical key, by the way), her name begins with D — D for drop-dead dazzling!
This aside, there were plenty of other people women — yay for feminism! — profiled for various other things, from a chef to an engineer to, um, a virtual cabin-crew member (cue Korean Air’s outrageously innovative virtual-human safety video)… rounded off with videos for United for Wildlife and, curiously, A Bag’s Life.
Does that sound similar to the sophomore production of Pixar Animation Studios, way back in 1998, well before the acquisition by Disney in 2006?
After this came a whole bunch of Qatar-related information and factoids in the ‘Fact [sic] and Figures’ section, and then a whole-ass Discover Qatar section, where, well… every single screen began with the word ‘Discover’. Like, wasn’t I discovering enough about this airline already through these exhaustive, exhausting, never-ending pages?!
Honestly, I’m more surprised there wasn’t a section on QR’s numerous sports sponsorships, most importantly FIFA — and above all the 2022 World Cup — because Emirates has that much in its own IFE. One can surely remember a time when the same Qatar Airways wordmark, in the Optima font since 2006, appeared on FC Barcelona jerseys. It sure makes for a contrast to SQ, which sponsors absolutely nothing bar the Singapore Airlines Grand Prix.
As an Indian, the most exciting of QR’s sports sponsorships to me is the one with Royal Challengers Bengaluru or RCB, one of the most high-profile teams in the Indian Premier League (IPL) men’s cricket tournament, which is played every year from March to May. Here’s a look at its 2025 promo video for RCB, which has performed excellently in the 2025 IPL season, qualifying for the playoffs comfortably. It’s never won a title yet (though the RCB women’s team did in 2024), but it has a very good chance of doing so in 2025, even reaching the final.
However, what I’d really want to see, as an aviation and cricket fan, is a Qatar Airways × RCB special livery. Arch-rival Etihad Airways did that in December 2024 when it unveiled an A320neo (A6-EJB) painted in the livery of another IPL franchise, Chennai Super Kings (CSK): the IPL’s most successful team by many metrics and one of RCB’s biggest rivals. I love that livery, all the more so as I’m a CSK supporter through and through, and I do hope that QR does the same for RCB.
Image copyright: Ritabrata Roy, Jetphotos.
With both RCB and Mumbai Indians — both sworn arch-rivals of CSK — performing outstandingly well and reaching the final, all while CSK crashed out so early, the 2025 IPL season was nothing short of a nightmare for this CSK fan! ;(
Still, there are much bigger concerns out there than a sports tournament, as highlighted with the Indian military’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in response to a terror attack in Kashmir in April — because of which the IPL was even paused for a week. I digress…
Anyway, back to the flight, and specifically the part of the Oryx One IFE that most people will gravitate to: movies. Unlike many other airlines, the moving map was so outdated that I didn’t bother with that, especially not with barely 15 minutes left in the flight!
As I said earlier, the Bollywood section leaned heavily towards arthouse movies, with Jawan — as I’ve mentioned so many times for SQ flights, including the previous instalment on SQ’s 737 MAX — being the only blockbuster of the lot.
How do you Qatarify your descent into Vietnam? Easy answer
No prizes for guessing that I turned straight to Dana Al Fardan’s D-minor-composed boarding music for whatever little time was there before wheels-down at Ho Chi Minh City. In this time I managed to empty the contents of the orange Tokyo-themed amenity kit, which contained toothpaste, socks, earplugs, eyeshades and… I’m sorry, the cabin was just too dark!
Almost as soon as it’d started, the flight was coming to a close, and A7-BAN kissed the ground ten minutes past six o’clock, with the dazzling lights of Vietnam’s biggest city surrounding the airport.
As I’ve said before, Tan Son Nhat International Airport is located bang in the city centre, with its highly outdated design being compensated for by its proximity to the busiest parts of HCMC. That’s a welcome relief of sorts to those accustomed travelling to nice airports that lie 35–50 km from the city centre, as seen with Kuala Lumpur, Seoul/Incheon and Bengaluru…
There were a number of interesting aircraft for display at the terminal, including VN-A897, Vietnam Airlines’ A350 in SkyTeam livery. No way was I gonna miss that!
To the left stood another SkyTeam member’s A350. No prizes for guessing which one, though: China Airlines. (Air France and China Eastern don’t fly A350s to SGN; Korean Air has only just started using them; and Garuda and Saudia don’t have them at all.)
Don’t forget that QR — the boastful airline that it is — was the world’s first airline to operate both the A350-900 and the A350-1000, and remains the largest operator of the latter. With SQ — currently the largest A350 operator, but with no -1000s* — having taken delivery of 9V-SJI, its final passenger A350, in 2024, QR is poised to retake its crown as the world’s largest A350 operator by 2026, as more and more A350-1000s in the A7-AO series keep rolling into the fleet.
*Ethiopian is currently the only Star Alliance member to operate the A350-1000, with three of them (ET-BAW/BAX/BAY) already flying, and a fourth and final one (ET-BAZ) expected to join by end-2025. In contrast, Oneworld has as many as four operators of the aircraft: QR with the groundbreaking Qsuite, JAL with the flawless First Class and Safran Unity Business Class, Cathay Pacific with its reverse-herringbones and BA with the Club Suites.
A fifth, Qantas, will launch its own ultra-premium A350-1000s in 2026 as part of Project Sunrise, flying without a break from Australia to London and New York — that’s one marathon ride!
We squeezed between two Vietnam Airlines 787s, with an AirAsia (Malaysia) A320neo and a Turkish Airlines A350 for additional company.
I said one last round of goodbyes to the flight attendants — which, as you’d expect for a Gulf airline, were pretty diverse by way of home countries — and practically jumped out of the door, jubilant. Mission Qatar Airways was finally, well and truly, accomplished!
The rest of the arrival experience and the connecting flight on SQ — nondescript as it was — will be covered in the Travelling Bonus at the end. I do, however, want to point out a couple of more things about this flight, one of them being the branding and typography of the Oryx One system.
Most Oneworld airlines, in particular — though also from Star, SkyTeam and otherwise (like Etihad and Gulf Air) — have outstanding consistency in their fonts across all areas of their identity, be it the website, signage, IFE or menus. Oneworld alone boasts of the highest number of such airlines: Cathay Pacific, Malaysia Airlines, Finnair, Qantas, Iberia, even former member LATAM Airlines. But QR is a bit less polished when it comes to the website, as its signature brand font, Jotia, isn’t used properly in all places — with the popular, overused Graphik font making an appearance nowadays — and the menus don’t use it at all.
However, the IFE system uses Jotia throughout, and nothing else — kudos! This was especially made clear on this 777-300ER, and the difference with Singapore Airlines’ KrisWorld system — ridden as it is with the horrible, generic Montserrat font (as I’d be flying next) — was night and day. Now all QR aircraft don’t have such font consistency in their IFE, like the much-vaunted A350 fleet or the ex-Cathay Pacific 777-300ERs, but this one most definitely did. It was such a welcome relief from the disappointment of KrisWorld!
At the end of it all, when I reached home from Changi, the whole Vietnam visa fiasco — expensive as it was — was dismissed as a nothingburger!
And that pamphlet, with a young smiling Cambodian woman with folded hands, to the left of my typically colourful journal? Why, that’s from Malis, a fine-dining outdoor restaurant in Phnom Penh showcasing the best of authentic Cambodian cuisine. That alone — and particlarly the crème brûlée flavoured with Kampot pepper — makes me want to return!
Thanks for sharing. I completely agree that QR is very proud and overhypes themselves a bit, and they do really need to work on having a more uniform cabin across their fleet, though they don't seem to have much interest in that (particularly the A330s).
I just flew Qatar a couple of weeks ago and I was a bit disappointed by them. It seems like you had a good experience overall, though how much of that was just the excitement of flying them on this route?
Congratulations on getting into IIM Bangalore! That'll be a massive change, good luck on it. It'll be really sad to not have any more of your FRs to read 😔