Superb - Qatar Airways A350-1000 Business Class Review
- Sam
- Oct 24
- 7 min read
As part of our journey to New Zealand earlier in the year, we cashed in our Avios, all 360,000 of them, for a once in a lifetime trip to the other side of the world. I'll ruin the end of this piece, it was worth every single one of them.
This review is from Doha to Auckland onboard Qatar Airways' Airbus A350-1000, featuring 46 of their flagship Q-Suite product in Business Class, and 281 Economy seats. For the first leg from Heathrow to Doha onboard Qatar Airways' A380, you can find that here!
It's worth saying that this flight was taken before Points Well Made had come to fruition, so apologies in advance for the lighting, framing etc.
What Did We Pay?
This is the tricky part, we always tell you what we paid for each flight, but as mentioned was the second leg of our epic journey to Auckland. For the whole leg from Heathrow to Auckland we paid 90,000 Avios, and £421.99 in taxes each, talk about a bargain! We talked all about how we booked this amazing points redemption in this article, and it's well worth a read.
How are the Lounges in Doha?
These warrant their own reviews quite frankly.
We visited both the original Al Mourjan Business Lounge, at the end of the airport with the creepy teddy bear, you know the one... and the Al Mourjan Garden Lounge in the new wing of the airport.
The Garden Lounge was by far and away our favourite. Light, airy, modern, enormous. You can read our review of this lovely lounge by clicking here.
So, How was the Flight?
This flight departed Doha at 2am, something that may sound a bit brutal, but when you factor in the time zone your body is accustomed too, or the sleep on the prior plane, the time of departure is about as meaningful as a salad sold in McDonalds.
Even for the "World's Best Airline, they are not above the menace that are bus gates, but they do put their own spin on things. There are separate buses for First, Business, and Economy passengers. And by that I mean, they have different buses, with different seating on board for each class of travel.
After a short bus ride to the other side of Doha, we boarded the A350, and you immediately know that the Q-Suite is in a league of it's own when it comes to Business Class seats. Resembling an experience more First than Business, once you've explored every nook and cranny of the seat, you're aware that life may have peaked too soon.
At your seat you will find a Diptyque amenity kit, a very plush velvet like throw/blanket, decorative scatter cushion, and a firmer cushion for sleeping on. The amount of in-seat storage was fantastic, with a deep bin capable of storing everything you need to the side of you, plus another storage compartment at head level where you can store headphones etc. Lastly, there is small shelf that is great for a book/iPad, but this cannot be used during take off/landing.
Once you are settled in, the crew come round offering White Company pyjamas to passengers.
If you are planning on flying the Q-Suite, I would recommend using this interactive tour of the entire Q-Suite cabin. You see, we were both situated in window seats, in which the seats alternate between closest to the window or the aisle. One of the highlights of the Q-Suite is that seats in the middle of the cabin can be paired together to form a cosy double suite. Or a set of four can have the walls retracted to enable an open plan room of sorts, allowing a family to share in this great experience.
With the door to the Q-Suite closed and in bed mode, you really do easily forget that you're in a carbon fibre tube hurtling through the sky at 500mph.
For myself at 6ft2, the space is plentiful. The footwell does get a little bit tight right towards the end as it pinches in, but it's very easy to find a comfortable position for you to sleep in.
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Qatar are in the process of fitting Starlink WiFi to all of their aircraft, providing customers a free and supremely fast way to stay connected. They have fitted this to all of the Boeing 777's, and are now fitting it to their 787's and Airbus A350's. I flew a Qatar 777 back in June which was fitted with Starlink, and it honestly blew me away. You can read all about that here!
Right, the food. As I said, this flight departed at 2am Qatar time, meaning my body was saying it was 11pm in the UK and time to sleep! When we boarded the crew came round to take our meal choices, and when we would like to eat. You see, Qatar operates "Dine on Demand", essentially meaning you can choose to eat whenever suits you, not in accordance to the service flows of the aircraft. This is great for you as a passenger, as you can eat when it suited your body, but my god, the Devil works hard, but the crew on Qatar Airways work harder!
I chose not to eat on departure, instead asking for my seat to be made up into a bed on departure, but I did make my food choices there and then for the rest of the flight thus guaranteeing they would be saved for me when I was ready to eat. Here is the menu below...
Unfortunately there will be some missing meals below, as said at the top, this trip proceeded us writing on Points Well Made.
After sleeping solidly for around 6 hours, I woke up and decided to have breakfast, which for me was the "hand-rolled omelette with tomato confit and mushrooms". I'm a sucker for eggs on planes. They're often terrible, so this is some sort of sick tortuous nostalgia. Yes, this omelette was predictably a bit "cakey", but the Bearnaise sauce, and creamed spinach helped to combat this dryness. This was served alongside a croissant, pistachio danish, and some bread (see the empty bowl at the back left for my thoughts).
After giving that a few hours to go down it was time to eat again... being the third longest flight in the world its only fair that we indulge, for science! The next course for me was the Arabic mezze followed by the Qatari spiced chicken machboos with daqoos sauce. We've all got our favourite Youtubers, and one of ours is "The Flip Flop Traveller", and he offers sound advice for situations like this, "whenever travelling on a Middle Eastern carrier, always choose the local rice dish", and I was not disappointed. Imagine a more indulgent chicken biryani and you'll be halfway there to what this chicken machboos was like, excellent!
For Helena... Well why don't I let her explain her food...
"Once again I had opted for a dairy free special meal for myself to keep my tummy happy. But after seeing all of Sam's delicious food. I managed to persuade him to let me order from the “normal menu” on the flight home I promised to be sensible and opt for the lower lactose options! Anyway, back to this flight…
My food wasn't on a menu, instead the crew came round to explain what each meal would consist of, as if you were doing a tasting menu at a fancy restaurant.
I really helpfully forgot to take a photo of my breakfast. However it was a lovely fruit plate (which I'm always happy to get on a plane, you've got to balance the good with the bad on a plane) and then a cooked breakfast which consisted of wilted spinach, a potato rosti thing (highlight of my meal, obviously, this was a hobbit pilgrimage after all), chicken sausage, eggs and tomatoes. It was nice but I had seen the chia porridge with coconut milk, orange, grapefruit and toasted pistachios on the menu and rather hoped I would get this instead. I do not share Sam's bizarre obsession with eggs on a plane, in fact I am the polar opposite to Sam when it comes to eggs on a plane!
For the other meal my starter was this lovely salmon and broccoli concoction with tomatoes and a sort of tomato hummus. It was a tiny bit bland, the lemon certainly helped but I did have to add a bit of salt to make it taste a bit better.
The main was a chicken breast, with a delightful gravy, sweet potato mash along side beans, peppers and aubergine. This was a great main dish, and I really enjoyed it.
The dessert … holy heck! This wins the award for the worst dessert in the air. As I've mentioned many times, vegan desserts on planes are usually revolting… Emirates shockingly being the exception to that particular rule. This chocolate mouse was all vegan gelatin, and somehow managed to curdle in your mouth. I managed two mouthfuls before deciding enough was enough and giving up! I will now hand you back to Sam for the rest of the review, but needless to say (ghastly pudding aside) the whole experience was just incredible.
From a personal point of view, flying over the western edges of Australia proved a rather surreal moment. For Brits, Australia is almost considered the edge of the earth, so to still have another six hours to fly from here to reach Auckland gave pause for thought.
After another short sleep as the sun set whilst crossing Australia, we began our descent into Auckland. This has to be one of the best ways to get to New Zealand from the UK, with the occasion being sweetened further by the absolute Avios bargain we had, spending only 90,000 each for this experience.
Would I recommend this? Absolutely.
Will we be going again? I can only hope so.
Sam
Points Well Made is a passion project of Sam and Helena with a loyal following. If you like what we do, and wish to help us continue to create the content you love, please consider buying us a Kofi, or subscribing monthly. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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