iluvdoco

yes please!

HB7

I have never understood why these 1-2 hour flights which are actually J have been marketed as F.

zebrametalevel

:-)

zebrametalevel

Also I suspect there's a fair amount of aping what the US carriers do, which is marketing their regional premium offering as first. I remember the old safety videos from QR used to helpfully point out that smoking on the plane was a federal offence.

N1Rotate

CX/BA/QF have different types of travellers than QR. First of all they have a much higher percentage of higher yielding O&D travellers.

The branding of the regional F is more to do with the local Qatari market, DOH-DXB-DOH fares in F are around $1350 or around US$ 1.80 per kilometre while you can book on QR.com a MUC-DOH-MEL-DOH-MUC fare in J (was able to price that for Mar 2016) for $2050 or $0.06 per km (That is less than European LCC average fares in economy on a per kilometre basis - not a fair comparison but just contextualises how cheap some of QR's premium fares are) or F class BKK-DOH-LHR-DOH-BKK for $2200 (US$0.10 per kilometre).

Not only are these passengers contributing much more revenue proportionally, they also cost less as the distribution costs are lower (e.g. no commissions in Qatar, while other markets rely on high TA commissions and consolidators) and the taxes on the airfares are lower. They also cost less because they use higher density seating, e.g. an A320 regional F seat takes the space of 2 Y seats while an A380 F seat takes the space of 6 Y seats.

To put things in perspective, 12 O&D pax in first will turn a profit on an A320 (roughly $10000 to 12000 all-in operating cost for an A320 DOH-DXB-DOH) without selling any other seat in Economy or any cargo, while if you fill a 777 with only connecting pax from the US with the typical fares the flight will be loss making even at 100% load factors.

What you label as the "Fake F" fliers are the actually the highest spending core frequent fliers for QR, as that is where the higher number of O&D premium passengers are. While the number of these fliers are small, they contribute a much higher share of revenue proportionally. These are the same passengers that book US$8000 fares to LHR/CDG on the same seats that would be sold for about $1100 (if you divide the $2200 for LHR-DOH-BKK equally). So it makes sense for QR to value them.

Not only is this market less price sensitive, the lounge is a much more important part of the product experience as in many cases more time would be spent in the lounge than in the flight itself. Also this adds more differentiation between regional Y and F to incentivise people to pay the difference between regional Y and F. A typical regional F fare for DOH-DXB-DOH is 8-9 times a typical economy fare on the same route, while your long haul J connecting pax will only pay around 3-4 times the economy price and get a much bigger product differentiation over all. On the other hand most of QR's long haul J class market is price sensitive and the lounge is much less of a factor in the decision making, and Al-Mourjan may not be the best but it certainly is very competitive when looking at other J lounges in the market place.

N1Rotate

With regards to the OW lounges, remember that the planning for the airport and the space allocated for the lounges was decided way before QR joined OW.

Right now the Al-Mourjan lounge is roughly 10,000 sqm and Al-Safwa will be identical in size. The Gold and Silver lounges combined are about half the size of Al-Mourjan.

In the North Node there is 5000 sqm of lounge space coming up soon. The long term expansion will see another 25,000+ sqm of lounge space. Most of the that additional space will be accessible to OWE/OWS according to HIA personnel statements to the press at the Qatar Transport forum in September 2015, so QR are planning to remedy the OWE/OWS situation while still maintaining exclusivity for their passengers travelling in the premium classes. All in all the amount of lounge space that is yet to open is around 4x that of Al-Mourjan, and it is planned to open in stages over the next 5 years.

Curious_George

Sitting at the bar in Al Mourjan waiting for my DOH-ORD flight and the bartender told me the first class lounge opens today so Al Mourjan shouldn't be as crowded. FWIW, When I asked about the Krug, he said it'll stay.

HB7

Haha, yes you're correct zebrametalevel, I wonder why they are marketING these flights as F. Actually I cringed a little after I submitted the post and then couldn't be bothered changing it as my flight was boarding

In any case, well spotted

tweaked

Thank you!! couldn't have said it better.

zebrametalevel

My point was less spelling and more suggesting the answer you were looking for lay in your question...

stargold

"Today" sounds pretty promising, of course subject to someone providing photographic proof I'm not so sure, and even if that's what he has been told, QR can simply change its mind very quickly. Would be the only J lounge in the world that I'm aware of serving a prestige champagne on the ground, if this remains the case.

jubbing

It's true, I had booked Business from Del to Dubai, via Doha - and suddenly I had a First class ticket from Doh to Dxb. I thought maybe I was upgraded somehow - but only then did I learn they just changed the name from Business to First - it was just me and 3 other people in the entire front of the plane.

Side note, F regionally still gives you more Tier Points.

IAN-UK

A phenomenon most BAEC travellers are used to from their AA adventures..

IAN-UK

Probably for the same reason the major US carriers market their premium cabin as F, rather than C, on domestic routes.

Lan44

Yeah, we need pics. After all some staff were saying the lounge was already open two days ago.