Review of Qatar Airways flight from Singapore to Doha in Economy

Welcome to my second series of flight reports. In this series, I visit 3 Balkan countries with my parents, namely Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. Incredibly beautiful countries in their own right.

I travel with both Qatar Airways and Air Serbia for the first time, in economy class and both gave me good flight experiences although Qatar Airways' customer service leaves much to be desired for such an amazing airline onboard.

Without further ado, these are the flights I flew:

Before flight: Changi Airport

Qatar Airways departs from Terminal 1 at Changi Airport. Changi Airport is my home airport and it is definitely one of the world's best. There is always something undergoing upgrading or refurbishment when I visit.

Despite the ungodly 3.15am departure, much of the food area in Changi Airport remains open and prices are not too ridiculous. I would say that the food and beverage prices in Changi are among the world's lowest for airports in developed countries. A full meal with a drink can be purchased with S$10 or less, enough to keep hunger pangs at bay.

I did not take any photographs of the terminal due to my fatigue.

Our ride for the night is A7-AMG, a 6.5 year A350-900. All QR flights to Singapore at the time of flying are equipped with QSuites since Singapore is a 'premium' market for them.
Indeed, our flight was completely full that night despite the ungodly departure time.

Inflight Experience

Boarding commenced and we took our seats. As a party of 3, we decided to take the middle block of 3 seats nearer to the front, since we had an extremely tight 50 minute connection to Belgrade, which we eventually missed. This stressful experience will be covered in the next report.

I am 1.77m and the seat pitch of 31 inches was ok for me. The seat width was also sufficient as I did not have to rub shoulders with my father seated beside me. I wouldn't mind flying long haul on this seat.

Every seat has a power port and a responsive touchscreen.

Qatar Airways provides a pillow, blanket, headphones and an amenity kit for our flight, placed at our seats. Seat pocket contains the safety card and vomit bag.
I did not open the amenity kit as I wanted to keep it forever in its pristine form. My parents opened theirs to reveal socks, eyemask and a dental kit.
There is no inflight magazine nor duty free magazine. This surprised me because I thought QR will have duty free shopping onboard, like its rival Emirates.

As a 5* airline, Qatar Airways offered us cold wet wipes to settle in for the flight. This was a nice touch and I kept mine in my bag, with the intention to keep it forever as a souvenir.

Service started around 40 minutes after takeoff, with a snack service on this ungodly hour. There was a choice of a heated curry chicken bun or vegetarian bun with a coffee chocolate muffin.
I picked the curry chicken bun long with water and cranberry juice, after being unable to obtain a Gin Rickey which the crew didn't know how to make despite being stated in their inflight menu.
All available drinks were showcased on their cart as they delivered the service, unlike Singapore Airlines who prefers to hide the costlier alcoholic drinks so that alcoholic drinks will be out of sight and thus out of mind of passengers.
This supper service tasted fine. I like that Qatar Airways offered Cranberry juice as an unconventional juice.

After the supper service, I went to the galley to get a drink, and the same crew who served me remembered my request for a Gin Rickey and made it for me. This gave me a positive impression of the airline as the crew remembered I wanted to try that drink and offered it to me. Turns out a Gin Rickey is just Gin with soda water.
I later went into the Galley to request their Mango Bellini, which was mango juice with Sprite.

Cabin crew also went around with a tray of water and juices regularly throughout the flight to hydrate people who were awake.

2h before landing, the crew turned the lights on to stimulate sunrise.

They then offered breakfast. I like that Qatar Airways is extremely generous with the meal choices, offering 3 choices for mains!
There was a boring omelette option, a spicy fish with rice option (Also called sambal fish with rice in Singapore), and a vegetarian fried vermicelli option. We unanimously selected the spicy fish with rice since the catering was from Singapore and they likely wouldn't get the chilli sauce wrong.

The meal came with a bowl of fruit, a croissant, fruit yoghurt and a 300ml bottle of water. I found it strange that Qatar Airways didn't give us any butter for the croissant or for other meals with bread.

All available drinks were showcased on their cart as they delivered the breakfast service, unlike Singapore Airlines who prefers to hide the costlier alcoholic drinks so that alcoholic drinks will be out of sight and thus out of mind of passengers.

All 3 of us enjoyed the food. The sambal fish with rice is excellent and I would eat that on the ground. The fruits were mediocre as usual out of Singapore, while the yoghurt needed more sauce.

I picked apple juice and sparkling wine for my drinks.

We landed in Doha Hamad Airport shortly and faced a problem: There was no available jetbridge for our flight since the flight came in late.
By the time we alighted from the flight, it was 6.55am and our QR231 flight to Belgrade was due to depart at 7.20am.
Our 50 minute connection was in jeopardy and thus I didn't take any pictures of Hamad Airport.