Qatar rolls out Qsuite to new destinations

Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport will be the second destination to have Qatar Airways’ new Qsuite business-class product, with the revamped cabins appearing on the route Sept. 25, the Doha-based airline said.

New York JFK will follow by the end of this year.

The carrier is converting its widebody fleet to the Qsuite configuration—previewed at the ITB exhibition in Berlin earlier this year and shown on board an aircraft for the first time at June’s Paris Air Show—and will have completed the process by the end of 2018.

The Boeing 777 fleet will be converted first, followed by the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, although it is not yet clear which of the latter two types will receive the new cabin first.

Introducing the new layout to the UK trade press at London Heathrow Sept.19, Qatar Airways-SVP Europe Jonathan Harding said development of the Qsuite had been undertaken in the light of customer surveys that showed business-class passengers prized privacy above all other factors.

With that in mind, the new seating, which is arranged in a 1-2-1 layout, has privacy screens that can be drawn across the entrance to individual seats, to separate them from the aisles.

The seats are also evenly split between forward- and aft-facing orientations. This allows the central pairs of seats to be transformed into a “club four” arrangement by sliding aside privacy screens between them, if a group of colleagues or family members are traveling together.

This arrangement has also encouraged Qatar Airways to introduce a series of “sharing snack” platters among its dining options that can be positioned between the two pairs of facing seats. The arrangement of the privacy screens means passengers in the central block of seats can also travel as a pair or have complete privacy as individuals.

The Qsuite has been operating on the Doha-London Heathrow sector for three months. “We’ve had very, very positive feedback,” Harding said. “It’s very different from anything the industry has seen before. We hope it will take Qatar Airways to the next step and really raise the bar.”