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Qatar Airways Boeing 787 - Nightmare in Economy

Qatar Airways Boeing 787 Singapore to Doha

This is the flight review video -

This was the very first leg, Singapore to Doha. The flight would depart SIN at 0230. By that time, we were all very sleepy.

A picture of the departures that early morning.
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Fortunately, Changi Airport had some loungers where we could snooze a bit. The loungers were very popular though. That area of the airport was very quiet and you could look at some plants and even a small water feature.
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Boarding was smooth and departure was slightly early, which was good because our connection at Doha was 45 minutes and we were wondering whether we could make the connection. The flight from Singapore to Doha would take about 7 hours.
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Now, I begin my rant. They call the Boeing 787 the Dreamliner, but it is certainly no dream sitting in the Economy class. Why? The seats are awfully cramped and the legroom is crazily tight. Even my kids felt a bit squashed and they are small in size.

The Boeing 787 in Economy is in a 3-3-3 configuration. I went into lots of detail about this point in my flight review video. But here are some pictures to illustrate my point.

This picture shows you the legroom available and the infamous IFE box, which takes up some space. The remaining space in front of my can barely take my backpack, which is by no means big.
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This picture shows you my legs in that small space.
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Another picture showing you the cramped seat and legroom. I guess for a short flight, say 2-3 hours, it is still ok. But for a red-eye, it is a completely different proposition.
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Do watch my video as I show you more of the cramped seating and I also take a walk around the cabin and you can see for yourselves the seating situation.

[to be continued]

To be fair to Qatar, other than the cramped seats on the B787 (which you can appreciate is a big deal given that we spend 99% of our time in the seat during a flight), all other aspects of the flight was very good, if not excellent.

International crew was attentive and very pleasant. Service was prompt. The IFE system was very modern.

Shortly after takeoff, we were served with a sandwich snack. These were warm sandwiches as well as a nice piece of warm cake. They were delicious. You could have a full bar service with your sandwich, that was nice.
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Thereafter they turned off the cabin lights so that we could get some sleep. 2 hours before landing, they served a full meal (breakfast).
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We landed early, which was a relief. To my surprise, we didn't have an aerobridge. We had to be take an airport bus to the terminal. However, while on the bus, I noticed that there were many empty aero-bridges. Strange. Were they deliberately creating work for the buses? I don't know.

Here is a picture taken while boarding the airport bus at Doha Airport. The ground crew were unloading luggage, especially those that required rapid transfer.
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Anyway, do watch my review video if you want to see more, including the cabin, the food and even the bus ride from the plane to the terminal at Doha.
 

pep

Medlem
Thats why some call it Nightmare-liner instead of Dreamliner. They are really bad. 2 weeks ago I was slightly lucky to get 3 seats in a row to get some sleep DOH-CPH. But still I had to crawl on my knees to access the seats as there was not enough space to walk in (when front seats were reclined). Very stuffy eller påfristande som de siger i Sverrig....
 
We landed early, which was a relief. To my surprise, we didn't have an aerobridge. We had to be take an airport bus to the terminal. However, while on the bus, I noticed that there were many empty aero-bridges. Strange. Were they deliberately creating work for the buses? I don't know.

I don't have a huge insight in this but I have been to our apron control once or twice (they allocate the stands) and it's quite a complex subject.

First of all you need a stand of the right size. Some stands can only take certain types, like a B744 or an A320. However it then gets worse. For example we haev a stand which takes an A320, but not an A320 with sharklets. I know of an airport where they have one stand which is B744 size, but can not take an A340-600 because of it being too long.

This goes on and on and on. Also we have several stands (in fact pretty much an entire terminal) where the stand capacity depends on what is to the stands beside it. So sometimes you can have aircraft waiting on taxiways or on remotes not because their stand is occupied, but because the one next to their stand has a tech issue or similar.

Then we have terminal issues. Airlines pay good money to get airbridges, they also compete to get the more lucratice stands (short distance to lounges, border control etc). This often results in a rotational system where airlines have different gates on different days of the week to "even out" the field. But then you have based ones who sometimes manage to push more leverage over the non-based ones, etc etc etc.

Finally we also have stands where domestic and/or international traffic can't be handled. So some stands can only be used by domestic trafffic. Some can only be used by non-domestic traffic. There are a handful which can do both, but they need to be reconfigured. So once again aircraft can be sat on taxiways waiting with an empty stand because the flows (ie the doors) in the terminal needs to be reconfigured.



So, many options here. The domestic issue is probably unlikely for that type of aircraft but could have been issues with size of stands. Could also have been something like the aircraft not being used for a long time, or about to go into a hangar. In those cases it might be easier to leave it remote rather than add an opposit direction towing movement in the inbound rush (nothing slows down ground movements as much as towing movements). The list goes on and on and on, but there is generally a good reason for it. No airport likes to make passengers bus if it can be avoided.
 
A

Aurora

Guest
Another picture showing you the cramped seat and legroom. I guess for a short flight, say 2-3 hours, it is still ok. But for a red-eye, it is a completely different proposition.
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Wow. That picture really captures the size of it. I think I would begin to cry if that met me onboard an airplane (I have long legs).
 
  • Gilla
Reactions: Gus
Thanks for the long explanation. Well, I am surprised at the bus transfer because Hamad International is a new airport and we are flying in Qatar to their home base (i.e. Doha) and we had a very tight 45 minute connection. I guess I wasn't too concerned with the tight connection since onward flight is with Qatar and I assume the plane would wait for us.

Hence we didn't run.

Otherwise, we would have been running to the new gate! (Which wasn't that near)
 
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  • Gilla
Reactions: Gus
Wow. That picture really captures the size of it. I think I would begin to cry if that met me onboard an airplane (I have long legs).

Thanks for your feedback! Now I know what type of pictures to take for my upcoming flights.

I hope you have seen my other reviews and videos. I do hope to try to convey my reviews factually, by providing objective information like pictures and videos so that other travellers can make up their own minds. Of course, I would have my own opinion, but my own opinion is that not that important. So feedback like yours is useful for me because it tells me what is useful. Cheers.
 
  • Gilla
Reactions: Gus

pep

Medlem
Apart from the proximity to seat in front the narrowness of the seat (lack of width) is another nightmare. I am not fat at all, but had to squeeze in 2 armrests which thereafter held me in an iron grip...Felt like a lot less than 50 cm. If you dont have an aisle seat its virtually impossible to leave your seat once you are "locked up" - if seats next to you are taken...
 
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