Originally Posted by
CPH-Flyer
I think the timing changes for the winter schedule, so past October 26th.
When Qatar operated the route themselves, they departed Doha around the same time as JAL but they did seem to use about an hour less of flying time than JAL does now. I can see my arrivals were around 22:30 to 22:50 on the Qatar operated flights. But that may have had things to do with airspace restrictions and routes being different now than back then.
Pretty sure QR overflies Russia on relevant routes, but that route shouldn't touch Russian airspace anyway.
Got me curious, I looked it up on Flightaware to compare QR806 to JL50, QR flies north east over Pakistan and enters Chinese airspace there, pretty close to a great circle route, looks like their only inefficiency is they go east for a bit to avoid Afghanistan. JL goes directly east over India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar and doesn't enter Chinese airspace until after Myanmar, that's definitely a much longer route and explains the hour longer flight.