[NOTE: This is a repost of a review from March 2017 of a Qatar Airways flight operated using a LATAM A350 frame. By popular demand as requested in the original thread (Munich to Doha on the QATAM (JJ frame, QR service) A350 in J), I am reposting the review with the images uploaded to FlyerTalk so they can be viewed on an ongoing basis. Mods, please feel free to close the previous thread and post a redirect if needed, and please note that this is separated into a number of posts as I am limited to six uploads per post.]

Introduction
Qatar Airways recently entered into an interesting arrangement to lease four A350 frames from LATAM until 2018. The first aircraft entered service in March, and as one of the first passengers to take the flight a few days after its first revenue services I have been looking forward to doing a write-up about my pending flight for two reasons. First, because trip reports on the LATAM (and formerly TAM) A350 are few and far between – and second, because I have genuinely been interested to try something different!

Hopefully this report gives you an overview of what the product overall is like, how the JJ hard product and QR soft product go together in practice, and what you can expect if the QATAM A359 turns up on one of your rotations.

Qatar Airways 60
Munich (MUC) – Doha (DOH)
Flight time: 5 hours, 40 minutes
Aircraft: Qatar Airways / LATAM Airlines Brasil A350-900 A7-AMA
Seat 4A – QR Business Class / JJ “Premium Business” Hard Product



Check-in
Positioning from London the previous day was straightforward, and after a night in the Hilton Munich Airport we took the short stroll over to Terminal 1 departures, and headed to Area A of the terminal where Qatar Airways resides for check-in around two hours before departure.


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Overall check-in was fine, with two agents assigned to premium passenger check-in and one of those dedicated to Business Class. Our bags were checked and we were good to go within about five minutes.

As part of check-in we were issued with paper boarding passes – we would have preferred to stick with the Apple Wallet passes we had downloaded, but more on that later.

Security is some distance from the Qatar Airways check-in desks, but once we got there it was quite quiet – we were again through passport control and airside within five minutes, but again it appears this was a quiet time for the airport and you get the sense there are busier times of the day.

Lounge
Like most of QR’s European departure points, Munich does not have a dedicated Qatar Airways Lounge. Business Class and oneworld status passengers are therefore invited to use the British Airways Galleries Lounge, which is located in the upper echelons of the airport once airside.



I didn’t have the opportunity to visit the BA lounge last time I was in Munich. I’ve found if you arrive with managed expectations, most Galleries lounges at outstations are perfectly fine for a short wait, and Munich was no different. The food offering in the lounge is better than most, with both a breakfast offering and light snacks including sandwiches available when we arrived at approximately 8.30am. There was also a fantastic selection of beers as you would expect in Munich, and a separate ice cream chiller!

That being said, I understand the consensus on the BA forum that the lounge is somewhat tired. We spent an hour there and that was about enough for us – it’s certainly not somewhere to spend half a day and maximise the “lounge experience”. We headed off for boarding at around 9.25am.

Boarding

We proactively headed to gate B01 at 9.25am, the time advertised on our boarding passes. This gate is the furthest in a small terminal but effectively means boarding round a corner, and with Economy passengers being told to arrive at 9.10am there was already a substantial herd of people blocking the way. We meandered our way through and spoke to the gate agent who advised Business Class passengers would be boarded in five minutes, but this was shortly followed by an announcement inviting everyone to board which resulted in an absolute scrum of people attacking two checkpoints. It seems strange that priority boarding is not enforced on a two-class plane and with status passengers not even acknowledged, it was a bit of a mess.



To make things all the more confusing, the gate agent stated that paper boarding passes needed to be presented to board the aircraft. Interesting given MUC is advertised as a mobile boarding-enabled airport. Oh well!