Just yesterday evening, Qatar Airways received its first A350-1000 aircraft, making them the first in the world to operate it. Back in 2014, Qatar Airways was also the first to operate the A350-900. I’ve personally flown on the A350-900 from Singapore to Doha back in 2015 and I can tell you it’s a fantastic aircraft, even in economy class I was loving every moment on the plane.
2 Class Configuration : QSuites and Economy
Similar to the rest of their fleet (with the A380 being the exception), Qatar has configured its A350-1000 in a 2-class configuration with a total of 327 seats onboard. As with their newer 777-300ERs, QSuites would be installed across their A350-1000 fleet as well.
Business class is configured in a 1-2-1 layout where alternate rows have their seats facing backwards and economy is in a 3-3-3 configuration. Lucky has tried the backward facing seats and has found them to be spectacular.
London Heathrow launch destination for A350-1000
When Qatar received its A350-900 in 2014, its inaugural flight was to Frankfurt. This time round, London Heathrow would be getting some love from Qatar Airways with the A350-100 being deployed on the QR15 flight from Doha to London and potentially returning as QR16. It’s interesting to see that Europe is getting much love for launch destinations for QRs new aircraft (as well as products). If you recall, the Boeing 777-300ER equipped QSuites was also sent to London Heathrow when it first launched.
Currently, Qatar has not updated their booking engine to reflect the A350-1000 on QR15, but as per Flightglobal, QR15 will be the inaugural flight.
Cost and redemption options
Currently, Qatar is offering decent fares to London Heathrow starting from approximately S$1,086.50 in Economy (as of 21 Feb 2018). In business class, revenue fares start at S$7000 ex-SIN on QR15 and QR16 to Heathrow. Unless you’re truly desperate to fly the QSuites and don’t mind splurging, it’s best to hold off until award space becomes available for business class.
For us here who only accrue miles from credit card spend, Asia Miles or British Airways Executive Club is where you should turn to for seats. As QR hasn’t updated their inventory to reflect the A350-1000, I’m unable to utilize KVS to hunt for award seats. The miles required for a one-way business class redemption in Asia Miles and BAEC for a flight from DOH to LHR would set you back 45,000AM and 60,000 Avios respectively.
Concluding thoughts
It’s great to see a spanking new aircraft out in the market, especially one from the A350 family which I truly adore. As per their press conference yesterday, His Excellency Mr Al Baker said that QSuites is already the gold standard and that the bar cannot go higher (I love how proud he is with his fleet products). Hopefully one day I’ll be able to find my way onboard the A350-1000 and provide a review for it. Until then, it’s back to my books.
hi i’m using Citibank cards. Should I transfer my thank u points directly to Qmiles? Why did you suggest to use Asia miles, is there any advantage doing so?
I guess you could do that too if you’re already accruing QMiles with Qatar PC.
If you’re able to snag a saver level reward with them that’s great!Otherwise most of the time i’m only seeing Q2 awards (i’m guessing this is Standard). Also, on the date I searched, BA was showing me 60,000 Avios compared to 86,000 QMiles which QR was showing me.
I tried searching SIN-LHR return and itโs 150k qmiles for J
Did I just searched wrongly?
AM at 90k for return looks a good deal Iโll check it out thanks
The figures in the article are for DOH LHR and not SIN -DOH-LHR.
[…] good news! As per Gulf Times, Qatar Airways will be flying their Airbus A350-1000ย which features their flagship QSuites Business Class productย on the Singapore – Doha route from 1ย November […]