Just a tip for those planning business-class RTWs: make sure you have as many legs on Qatar Airways as you can.

We're just back from a nice meaty RTW (OSL-xDOH-ICN-SYD-BNE-CNS-BNE-MEL-LAX-xDFW-BNA-(surface)-MSY-DFW-SFO-DOH-LHR-OSL) and managed to get four legs onto QR.

It's been widely commented on elsewhere, but QR's hard and soft product is arguably the best in the skies -- better than BA First (and similar) in many ways. You have lots of room -- tons of room if your aircraft is configured with the QSuite. Service is generally thoughtful and responsive. Pyjamas are provided. Meals are apparently available at whatever time you want (this was one of the advantages of First) and the food was pretty good, albeit still airline food. (And a million times better than the prison-slop AA threw in front of us on each of our domestic US flights.)

Ground service is variable - Doha has fabulous lounges, other airports put you in a codeshare lounge of mediocre quality. In some airports checkin/boarding is outsourced and can be poor - on the first flight for a RTW we arrived literally 30 seconds after checkin closed and the local (Oslo) person said "all your flights will be cancelled and we can do nothing" and in response to my request to speak to the QR manager they said "he won't want to speak to you" !! Once we did actually get hold of the QR manager he was instantly and delightfullly helpful, not only getting us onto the flight straight away but also coming down personally on a scooter to ensure we were comfortably passing through immigration. First-rate service once you get the local team out of the way.

Long flights are a real test of an airline's comfort, and I can say that the long (don't-ask-about-the-carbon-footprint) route SFO-LHR via Doha was amazingly comfortable. The 15 hour leg flew by. And in Doha we took a 23-hour stopover to visit the souk (camels! falcons! merchants!) and the absolutely fantastic Islamic Art Museum.

Not every flight will be perfect but on the basis of our last couple of RTWs I'd say if you can get any legs to be QR, do so.

(Also, on this RTW, QR kept to schedule almost all the time, but every Qantas flight was cancelled, rescheduled without telling us, or horrendously delayed with minimal compensation. Worth avoiding.)

To which FFP did you opt to credit your flights?

Mine went on BA. I guess they are in transition to the new, meaner, revenue-based model so I had no idea what to expect.
I got about 69k Avios including some Gold bonuses.

So, my biggest issue with QR is that they are only good for truly long haul flights. Given the location of DOH, many of their routes are 7-8 hrs which is simply too short to enjoy a long haul business class experience. You're not really able to get a decent amount of sleep in the suites because once the meal service is over, there's just a couple of hours left.

QR also has "fabulous" lounges at LHR and CDG and its own lounge at BKK, which, while I wouldn't describe it as fabulous at the same level as the lounges at LHR and CDG, is quite nice, and much nicer than the average airline lounge.


I fly QR on <7 hour routes somewhat regularly (BKK, MAD, CDG), and I still quite like it. I don't need or want to sleep on every flight.

I quite like that BKK lounge, but then again I've always used it with other OW airline boarding passes, so it's miles better than anything else in BKK. I've actually never been to / from BKK on QR.

I think I'm quite lucky though in regards to QR, I end up with a lot of ex-USA flights which are sufficiently long plus deeper into Asia like CGK and MNL. I definitely don't love the short ones like TBS, NBO, EBB, CAI, etc. but it's still much better than many alternatives in the region.

I'm sure QR is great for people who can fly it but there are many groups of people who would do well to stay clear of it. See for instance https://apnews.com/article/qatar-aus...d2e55772f7ff88 and https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/24/...se-lgbt-people

We're talking about the airline, not the country. The incident described in the first linked article was clearly a one-off, and the second linked article has nothing to do with the airline.

QR is also great if your main reason for a RTW is "maximum experience" since it's the nicest hard/soft product. However, some people choose RTWs to minimize costs on what would otherwise be expensive itineraries, or to actually see cities they want to see instead of avgeeking out all the time.

I�ve got a few QR segments in ours (HKG>xDOH>CPT and DOH>OSL), although HKG>DOH will be on former CX metal. Did plan (LHR>DOH) too, but BA could not see availability when I booked it and the Tour CEO is not happy with me messing about with it anymore!

Did think about changing our AKL>xSYD>HKG to the direct CX AKL>HKG (same availability issue when I booked it) and then having an extra segment to do CPT>DOH>LHR>DOH>OSL (with a 2 night stop over on one of the DOH arrivals) but it would mean 3 long haul flights back to back, due to time constraints and Tour CEO not happy with that either!

But if I get any unplanned schedule changes I may ask anyway?😉

We took your advice and modified a RTW to end with a QR flight. Now I am trying to optimize to have as many QR flights as possible. Love looking at routes that include QR and am looking for examples for ideas. Thanks for the suggestion.