Three weeks ago I booked my flight for Dubai on an airline I’d never heard of for what ended up being the longest flights I’ve ever been on. Qatar Airways was running an incredible deal and I was able to get a round-trip flight from Houston to Dubai with a quick layover in Doha, Qatar for $682. That’s less than half the price that other airlines charge for a flight like that. Now I know that the term “quick layover” is a relative term, for some it’s 3-5 hours for an international flight, but that wasn’t the case here. When I say quick, I mean quick. My layovers were only 1.5 each way which was perfect for me to get through security and finding my gate. All in all I had a really great experience with them and I wanted to share a few things that I really liked about their airline company.
They live up to the hype. Qatar Airways has been in the top 10 best airlines overall list for years, often going back and forth between 1st and 2nd. To me that says a lot! There are so many airlines and to consistently remain not only in the top 10, but in the top 3 means that strive to give their customers the best experience and often do. We started our flights off with a cool and calming facial wipe and on our long-haul flight they even gave us an amenity kit full of comfort essentials like a Miradent dental kit, eye mask, socks and ear plugs. The eye masks and ear plugs really came in handy when I napped and I wore those socks all around my hotel room.
The flight crew is pretty awesome. This was my first trip to Dubai and while I’m not a novice when it comes to flying, I was when it came these long-haul flights. I had a game plan going into my flight from Houston to Doha and that included taking a ZzzQuill for the 14.5 hour flight. I had everything packed up in the compartments in my backpack, but for some reason I couldn’t find my pills when I got on the plane. I was getting a bit frustrated with myself and one of the flight attendants must have noticed because he quickly started chatting me up and asking me about my trip and how my day was going. He didn’t have to do that, he could’ve just continued helping people to their seat, but that extra care that he showed me went a long way. Oh, and they even went as far as waking me up when I missed the first two meals on my flight back home. I’d made sure that I put my pills in a spot where I could find them and took two shortly after we took off so I slept through brunch and the snack, but the flight attendant made sure to ask if I wanted to wake up and eat. I’ve slept through meals with other airlines and didn’t even find out until the people around me told me. All of the flight attendants were super attentive and nice and just didn’t hesitate to go that extra mile.
There was so much in-flight entertainment! Before I left home I made sure to download movies and shows on my iPad. I don’t know about y’all, but I love that new feature on Netflix. I had the entire season of Lemony Snicket downloaded as well as a few other movies, but didn’t even get to watch them. There were so many movies and TV shows available for me to watch and between naps I ended up watching 5 movies!
The food was delicious! Now I know that airline food has the tendency to be hot cardboard, but that was not the case with Qatar Airways! They take their on-board meals very seriously and I thoroughly enjoyed every meal I had. I wish I’d taken more pictures but I had breakfast sandwiches with fresh fruit and yogurt, chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes with steamed veggies, chicken and broccoli and their rolls were so good! They also had cookies, sandwiches and chips if you just wanted to snack. There was also so much chocolate and they even served alcohol for free! I didn’t want to mix anything with my sleeping pills, but I definitely saw the other passengers around me getting gin and tonics, wine and other spirits at no additional cost.
I had so much leg room. I read that Qatar Airways had wide seats and a lot of leg room, but I didn’t really believe it until I got onboard. I didn’t have anyone sitting next to me on my first flight so I really got to stretch out and used the middle seat as storage since the armrest didn’t go all of the way up. That was my one and only qualm about the airline, but I guess it makes sense with the way the newer fleets were designed. The arm rest not only had the recline button on it, but it also had the headphone, USB and Ethernet ports on it and it made sense to have it only go up so far. Oh and I made sure to wear compression leggings for both legs of my trip, but on the way back I forgot to wear compression socks and my swollen legs are no joke. I was able to stretch them out because I had a lot of leg room, even with the person in front of me being incredibly rude and having his seat reclined for most of the flight.
I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Qatar Airways and I will not hesitate to book another flight with them in the future. Have any of y’all flown with them? If so, what was your experience like? Feel free to comment below or tweet me and let me know!
[…] do that trip all over again. I’ve already told y’all about my awesome experience with Qatar Airways, but I wanted to share my trip with you. I’m breaking this up into a few posts because my […]