Qatar Airways’ QSuites is widely considered to be one of the best business class products available in the world. And, thanks to the power of miles & points, flying QSuites can be affordable. I’ve long wanted to try it out, and the stars finally aligned for a December trip to South Africa where my wife and I flew JFK to Doha on QSuites and from there to Cape Town on Qatar’s A350-900 business class without QSuites (which is nice, but doesn’t compare to QSuites). Here, finally, is my quick QSuites review…
Qatar QSuites Bottom Line Review
It is all that. We found the in-flight QSuites experience to be terrific. The seats are comfortable, include doors that close, and they have decent storage space. Service was terrific and included the flight attendants making our beds with fitted padding (and they even turned our middle seats into a double bed for us). The decor was elegant (especially with candlelight dining). Food was very good.
My only criticism of the experience is a small one: there was nothing special about the ground service when flying out of JFK. Qatar doesn’t have its own lounge so you instead can visit the AA/BA business class lounge (which I thought was very nice), but not their most premium lounge. Then, when boarding, there didn’t seem to be a dedicated line for QSuites passengers. We had to inconveniently push past all of the economy passengers to board. I’m really mentioning this only because Qatar likes to compare QSuites to international first class products and I think it compares fairly well onboard, but not on the ground.
- How we found it: When Qatar added a new late-night flight from JFK to Doha, award seats were briefly wide open. Just like many others, I learned about it right here via this Frequent Miler post. To proactively look for award space, see the section below titled “How to Find Qatar QSuites Awards.”
- How we booked it: I booked the JFK to Doha segment using 70,000 AA miles per person (I could have alternatively paid 70,000 Avios). Later, I added on the (non-QSuites) flight from Doha to Cape Town. If I had been able to book that all at once, it would have cost only 75,000 AA miles per person, but the first segment was no longer available so I paid 45,000 Qatar Avios per person for that second leg.
- Cash Price: Over $10,000 one-way. Round trip flights to Doha start at around $14,000, so $7,000+ one-way might be a better comparison point.
- Route: New York (JFK) – Doha (DOH)
- Aircraft Flown: Boeing 777-300ER
- Ground Service:
- Check-in: There was a dedicated business class check-in counter at JFK.
- Departure Lounge: Greenwich Lounge. This OneWorld business class lounge is excellent.
- Boarding: This was a slight negative. When we arrived at the boarding gate, people were lined up waiting for economy boarding and it wasn’t clear what we were supposed to do. We had to push past lots of people to ask someone and they said that we could go ahead an board. It would be nice if they had a dedicated business class boarding lane instead (or at least make it clear with announcements that business class passengers should shove through).
- Business Class Seat: The seats are comfortable, stylish, and include a decent amount of storage space. I love that the seats all have privacy doors and that middle seats can be made up as double beds (as was done for us). In fact, when traveling with four, four middle seats can be set up to be able to see each other and dine together.
- In-Flight Entertainment: Excellent. The screens are big and bright and the system was loaded with plenty of entertainment to choose from.
- Internet: I didn’t try it.
- Food and Beverage: Very good. The presentation of the food was outstanding. The taste of the food varied from excellent to just okay. The green tea waffles were surprisingly delicious.
- Service: Nearly flawless. Flight attendants really attended to us. They kept us happy with food and drinks. They promptly removed trash. And at bed-time they made up our seats into a single double bed with comfortable padding. This outstanding service is the main thing that made the flight feel more like international first class than business class. The only minor miss was that while a flight attendant gave my wife a tour of her QSuite and showed her how to work all of the controls, no one offered the same to me. That said, I found it all to be pretty intuitive.
- Would I choose to fly it again? You bet!
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great service
- QSuites seats are great: comfortable, stylish, include privacy doors, configurable to a double bed or to a four person meeting space.
- Very good food
Cons
- Ground service (at least out of JFK) could be better
How to Find Qatar QSuites Awards
70K Saver Awards between the United States and Doha can be tough to find, but it’s not impossible. Check out the video above and also see these posts:
- How to find Qatar QSuites award space
- What Carrie learned from watching Greg find Qatar QSuite award flights
Note that with Qatar Airways Avios, it’s often possible to find one-way award space between the United States and Doha for double the saver price (i.e. 140K Avios rather than 70K).
You can get Avios points by transferring from almost any popular transferable points program:
| Rewards Program | Amex Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Chase Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Citi Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Marriott Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Capital One Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Bilt Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qatar Privilege Club Avios | 1 to 1 (Unknown) | 1 to 1 via BA (Instant) | 1 to 1 (1 to 2 days) | 60K to 25K (3 to 4 days) | 1 to 1 via BA (Unknown) | 1 to 1 via BA (~5 Minutes) |
Image Gallery
Qatar QSuites Seat and Cabin
Qatar QSuites Dining
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Qatar is still having frequent aircraft changes which results in many flights that were booked as Q-Suites being flown with a non-Q-Suite aircraft. The only thing that is great is the low cost of the award. I caution people to approach their flights with the knowledge that their aircraft may not have Q-Suites, to avoid being disappointed when it happens.
QSuites are not that great if you are 6 feet or taller. The ergo seats dig into your back. I did a similar flight in August, LAX-DOHA-CPT, JBN-DOHA-LAX. all QSuites. Outbound 350-1000, then an old 777-300, inbound 787 (more room) and again 350-1000. DOHA airport no jetway, schlep your luggage down some stairs in 42° Celsius, long walk, only to end up in an very hot Business/First Class lounge. Better that any US product, absolutely, room for improvement 100%.
Wonderful article, Greg. My wife and I are scheduled to fly Qsuites on the Houston to Doha portion of our round trip to Thailand in November. We also are supposed to fly the Qsuites-lite version the Boeing 787 flights from Doha to Bangkok.
Flew Q suites from SEA-DOH on this past month. Boarding biz class was separate from economy. Check in was smooth and efficient. Seats were comfortable and flight attendants provided exemplary service. No one showed us how to operate the seating and lighting it was easy enough to do. DOH-JNB was comfortable though not Q suites. Again great service in the air and on the ground.They offer a great product all around.
The only thing I did not like about those particular couples seats is how warm it gets. no air vents except for window seats. I had to ask to move away for minute to a window seat to cool off as the window seats do have the controllable air vents, this was on both legs of a RT.
That’s interesting. We didn’t have that problem at all.
Completely agree that their ground services are terrible. We flew JNB-DOH and DOH-SEA last June, both legs in QSuites. Boarding in both airports was an absolute mess. Ironically it was extra bad in DOH. First, we deplaned on stairs at DOH and took buses (which mixed Economy and Business passengers) a long, long way across the airport, then went through security. We had to hustle to our gate because by that time we had only about an hour before our departure to SEA.
At the gate, we were put through a second security checkpoint, where they seized our bagged and fully sealed duty-free liquor, which had been ignored at the first checkpoint. Once through the second security, there was nowhere to sit. We ended up standing for at least 45 minutes in a shoulder-to-shoulder mass of people at the gate. No announcement (that we could hear) of Business class boarding. It seemed they went straight from pre-boarding to Economy. So we ended up in a long line to board with the Economy passengers.
By the time we got on board in DOH, I was swearing off ever flying Qatar again. Once onboard, great food and service. But I question if it’s worth it.
We are here to discuss luxury travel experiences and not to get into a discussion about wars that don’t affect me. So if you want criticize someone for using Qatar Airways, while Qatar bankrolls Hamas, do it on some other blog, and not here.
Keep up the great work, Greg!
Wouldn’t it just be the Greenwich lounge unless you’re OW Emerald?
You’re right. Fixed.
Greg, Curious if your two separate award tickets were enabled to be combined so that you could check your bags all the way through to your final destination. We have had issues in the past (out of JFK) where agents are unwilling to assist with two separate award tickets and we’ve had to collect our bags at midpoint and re-check them, almost missing our second leg. This never seems to happen on the return flights.
It wasn’t a problem for me. When I told the check-in desk agent what I wanted to do, she sent me all the way to the left to talk to the people that do special stuff like this and they did some magic to tie the tickets together and then sent me back to the first person to check our bags. We were worried about whether the bags would really go all the way, but they did.
Just flew QSUites LHE-DOH this morning! Great as ever. Now enjoying a long layover in both QR Biz lounges.
I had the same no separate line problem happen in Chicago. Plus as a bonus, they switched aircraft 24 hours before our departure and didn’t get to try qsuites.
I found availability both directions to/from Chicago in May for 70K and am looking forward to trying out QSuites. I hope they do not swap aircraft, but at least I have twice the chance to get at least one of them to be in QSuites.
That’s call “Qatared” in the hobby. It can happen 50% of flights Qatar is notorious for changing aircraft in the last 24 hours.
That’s really quite strange that there was not a separate line to board. In Seattle they did have that. (I was watching Qatar board while waiting for my Turkish flight to board.) Your flight as a whole looked amazing though! One question about your second flight… what exactly was the plane? A350 1000’s all have QSuites. Maybe list the A350 varient you flew? Thanks!
A350-900. I updated that section