Aircraft Qatar Airways, Airbus 340-600
Route London LHR to Doha DOH
Class economy, seat 30A
Seat pitch and width 31 inches seat pitch and 18 inches between arm rests
Seat configuration two-four-two
Luggage allowance maximum of 28kg checked-in, 8kg hand luggage, no extra charge for golf clubs
Scheduled flight time 6 hours and 45 minutes
Punctuality 15 minutes late leaving, but arrived on time
Condition of craft Clean, tidy and fairly modern. VoD IFE system and fully interactive. Only used the bathroom at the beginning of the flight, so it was naturally in a clean state at this point.
In-flight entertainment IFE was very good. They had a good selection of VoD (although not as good as Virgin) and an excellent selection of other comedy, drama, entertainment shows. The screen size was pretty standard for modern aircraft and was limited to the size of the head-rest on the seat in front. The quality of the picture was not the best though and improvements could be made. However, the viewing angle was great – the tilt angle allowed for viewing at whatever position the seat in front was in.
It also prevented the person in the seat next to you from seeing your screen. The controls were pretty disappointing though. The rewinding and fast-forwarding were pretty clunky – by the time you’d pressed the button and realized it was working, you’d gone way past the point you wanted to stop at. Very annoying. There were also some movies listed in the in-flight magazine that weren’t on the system, which again was really annoying.
Comfort The flight was very comfortable. The only negative for me was the seats reclined so far back that the screen (on the seat back in front) ends up in your face when you’re trying to watch something. The controls for the IFE were inside the arm-rest, although this did mean you had to raise the flap to get to it, I didn’t find it an issue.
Service The service overall was actually excellent. The cabin crew were very polite and did everything required of them…plus they were really hot.
Food and beverages The food actually wasn’t bad. I’ve had better, but certainly had worse. There was no printed menu though and it was only available on the IFE system for a short amount of time, so if you didn’t memorise it instantly, you weren’t sure what was available. There was a choice of two dishes – either crabcakes with rice or lamb kofta.
Each came with a pasta and tomato salad, bread roll, cheese and biscuits, and a dessert. I had the crabcakes which were tasty and meaty but could have done with being crispier. I had the white wine with my crabcakes and had a choice of Chilean or French, the former was very good – fruity and not too sweet.
Flight frequency Four times daily, in both directions.
Cost of ticket £355 (Expedia exclusive price)
Website qatarairways.com
Clean, tidy and fairly modern aircraft
The tilt angle allowed for viewing at whatever position the seat in front was in
The rewinding and fast-forwarding were pretty clunky
James Brown
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