Qatar Airways - Review
Okay, so you may have read about our Qatar Airways flight from the UK so I thought it only fair I provide an update now we’ve flown the return journey too.
We decided to lodge a complaint with the airline to see what would happen, and to be honest didn’t expect much. As I mentioned in the previous article we rarely seem to fly the same airline twice despite all our travel so it’s hard to play the “important passenger” card, doubly so when you’re on a heavily discounted fair. To our suprise they got back to us and agreed to give us a credit, nothing huge but something nonetheless. Emma graciously accepted it but the cynic in me was less impressed; we’d just received a credit to put towards a future flight with an airline that I didn’t really want to fly with again.
What a difference a day makes (20 hours actually)! The whole return journey was an almost entirely different experience, except that the food was still excellent. Melbourne to Doha had quite a number of empty seats and it seemed everyone in the back third of the plane where we were had enough seats to lay down across to sleep. And so we did. Along with the blankets and usual fare you get there are stickers to place on your seat to let the staff know if you want to be woken for meals. I placed the “do not disturb” sticker up, and somehow the staff used their ninja like abilities to squeeze past me while I was asleep to close the shutters.
When I did awake after a couple of hours, I got to experience what the a functioning inflight entertainment system is like with Qatar! Hurrah! It’s nothing too amazing, like most “on-demand” offerings these days (although it has a combination of remote and touch screen controls). One notable difference was that, with the exception of brief interruptions to inform you of landing card requirements or other local issues, the inflight entertainment is available almost up until landing.
The transfer in Doha was just as brisk as it had been on the way out to Australia, which I loved just as much as the first time. Long enough to get some air and stretch your legs, but very quickly back on your way with the minimum of delay.
So that’s that, I guess they must’ve given me a big serve of humble pie on board the return flight and like most other feed they dished up I downed it very quickly. It wasn’t that there was a lot wrong with the first flight, it was just feeling a bit let down in their approach to dealing with the situation at the time. They made a gesture towards rectifying that feeling which is generous given my standing with them as a passenger, and the return flight was faultless. So, I’ll definitely fly them again.
