Originally Posted by
PMMMDL
Great price.
Does not look like Qsuites to me...What leads you to think it is Qsuites.
QSuites vs the older and far less interesting configuration is hit-or-miss on this route, at least on the DOH-BKK and BKK-DOH legs. I have not been able to find a way to get the QR app or site to show me the seat map until after I have paid for a ticket, and SeatGuru always seems to show the old map even on flights that turn out to have QSuites. ExpertFlyer seems to be accurate, however.
I bought one of these tickets in January for a March-April trip. At that point the lowest price was about US$2300. Wasn't expecting QSuites, but got them on the DOH-BKK outbound and on the long DOH-YUL return. Just bought another one for an October-November trip at US$2008, plus US$20 for a three-day hold while I looked around to see if I could find anything better. While I had the ticket on hold QR would let me choose special meals but not seats. I paid for the ticket last night and was finally able to select seats: QSuite YUL-DOH, old seat DOH-BKK, and QSuites on both legs of the return trip, all exactly as ExpertFlyer had predicted.
One wrinkle I encountered in this latest booking is that I was not able to find the lowest ($2008) fare on the outbound flights that have the relatively short (3+ hour) layover in Doha. Those were the flights I took in March, arriving Doha 4:50 p.m., leaving at 8:10 p.m., and arriving in Bangkok at 6:55 the next morning. But on all the days in late October that I could have flown, that flight was available but was $300 more expensive. The $2008 fare was available only with a 8-to-9-hour layover in both directions. So on this next trip I will arrive DOH 4:50 p.m., leave at 1:40 a.m., and arrive in BKK at 12:30 p.m. I much prefer the earlier flight -- not so much because of the layover as because 7 a.m. is a better time to arrive in Bangkok -- but I decided the relatively mild inconvenience was worth the $300 savings.
Another thing to notice is that there are several QR flights between DOH and BKK every day. On the way back four of these flights leave BKK within a couple of hours of each other, roughly 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. On my flight days in mid-November these flights were all available at the lowest price. I used ExpertFlyer to look at seat maps and chose the one that had QSuites.