[Anonymous]

[consult717]

I was taken by the fact that qatar so called 5 star airline does not have flat beds on its NY doha route on its 777-300 in business. At best it is 160 degrees and somewhat older planes.

[cityprofessional]

I quite like the QR 777-300ER. The cabin is open and spacious, and the seats feel pretty flat to me. OK, so it’s 2-2-2, but single travellers can take the middle section to guarantee and aisle and nobody stepping over

Obviously the 787/350/380 product is better, but arguably it’s not as spacious as the 77W, and the new seats are nice, but not nearly as wide

[FDOS_UK]

consult717 – 20/10/2015 15:16 BST

You are confusing two terms

– flat bed – it is flat in profile
-lie flat – it lies parallel to the floor

QR still have angled flat beds as you say and these are not as good as lie flat seats, but they are miles better than the Emirates recliners which were finally phased out only a while ago, IIRC.

[nibbler]

@CityProfessional i wouldn’t argue – especially if you are tall the Qatar 777 seating is awesome. You get a huge amount of legroom, a great table to work on; and loads of storage.

[esselle]

Interesting. On all the 773’s I have flown on QR, the seat has been fully flat.

[FDOS_UK]

esselle – 20/10/2015 18:17 BST

I’m sure you’re right – I’ve only flown the A320, A340-600 and A380.

The A340-600 seats are exactly as the OP describes – maybe confused over a/c type?

[esselle]

FDOS_UK

I suspect you are right, as the 773 fleet is quite a young one.

[consult717]

Its just a surprise to me that a so called 5 star airline does not have 180 degrees lie flat beds on a heavily traveled long haul route. I agree that the seats are wider and I prefer those to other configurations but I have a difficult time sleeping on 160 angle and Qatar mostly flies 77W on this route instead of A380.

[AMcWhirter]

This seems strange. Qatar’s website lists two different seating plans for its B777-300ER fleet.

In business class the seat pitch for both is 78 ins. Seat recline is 177 degrees for one B777-300ER version and 180 degrees for the other.

Qatar does not “mostly fly 77Ws on this route.” It doesn’t fly any A380s at all to New York. The only Gulfie taking the A380 to New York is Emirates although, as we have reported, Etihad will follow next month.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/102127/etihad-moves-forward-a380-service-to-jfk

You have to remember that, with the exception of Emirates, the Gulf airlines are still taking delivery of A380s.

To operate a daily Gulf-New York service an airline would need a minimum of three A380s. But at present, according to its website, Qatar has just four in service although nine remain on order.

In the case of Etihad, New York will gain an A380 service but in comes at the expense of London which is having to now make do with fewer Etihad A380 flights.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/102152/etihad-reduces-a380-operation-at-heathrow

[BTMEEditor]

I flew on a 777-300ER to Philadelphia when QR launched the route and it was a new plane and went fully flat, very comfortable flights both ways.

[PeterCoultas]

Just typical of misleading marketing – using the ambiguous “flat” to describe the seat. As FDOS points out one interpretation is that the “bed” is flat in profile – but no sane person would take this interpretation as that bed could actually be at any angle, even vertical! The alternative “parallel to the floor” would seem the only reasonable interpretation (but would not necessarily result in a horizontal sleeping position!).

[rferguson]

Arghh the Flat Bed topic is such a minefield. Especially with carriers that have multiple incarnations of ‘beds’ in their current fleets. What complicates this even more is when you cannot tell from a seatmap which type of bed you will get – for example on QR’s A330’s most are angle flat beds, some are fully flat. But by looking at a seat map an MMB stage there is no way you can tell which aircraft is rostered as the configuration seat map is exactly the same between the two types.

It seems to get even trickier when a ‘flat’ bed has a 177 degree recline. Because some airlines will still claim this is ‘fully flat’ with the 3degrees incline being deliberate to compensate for the nose up flying attitude of the aircraft.

It’s always risky hedging your bets on getting a fully flat seat with an airline that offers many different seat types – such as QR. It’s especially apparent when some airlines newest products are two or three generations ahead of their oldest for example QR/AA/EK. I was gutted when I booked to fly DOH-FRA with QR specifically to fly on the new A350. The day before it was subbed to an A330 with the old angle flat product. A similar thing happened when flying QR MXP-DOH. An A330 was rostered and then replaced with a narrowbody A321 on the day! A huge downgrade.

As the airlines see it generally you aren’t due any compensation – they are selling a seat to get you from A to B. Buried deep in their T&C’s that we accept when ticking that little box to purchase are rules heavily on the side of the airline. They can chop and change aircraft as much as they wish. Some airlines on some routes ‘guarantee’ a fully flat bed (ie BA/AA LHR-JFK) which would give some come back if you suffered a substitution. But on the whole, airlines don’t seem to be too apologetic when subs happen.

[cityprofessional]

Just to be clear on this, there is no mix up between flat and lie-flat in this case. The Qatar 77W business class seats are at least 177 degrees, and at that angle I defy anyone to tell the difference vs. 180 degrees

It would be different if they were flying the old, unrefurbished A330s, which are about 160 or 165 and your feet end up in the footwell. Luckily none of them has the range to get to JFK. Even the A340s are now refurbished to be (true) flat bed

Qatar has never had angle/lie flat beds on its 777s. The OP also says the 77Ws are “somewhat older”. They’re not. Some of them are brand new, out of the box, delivered in the last few months

There’s plenty to complain about Qatar, I’m sure. Lack of flat beds on transatlantic routes is not one of them

As for European routes, the substitutions will become fewer and less frequent, as 787s and A350s get delivered; and anyway the A330s and A340s are all being refitted with flat beds, so it won’t matter

Unlike Emirates, for example, which is still getting brand new 77Ws delivered, all (100+) of which have angled beds, and the dreaded middle seat in business class, which Qatar has never had. And with Emirates, you’ll get those angled beds on their longest routes – everything from Seattle and Panama to Christchurch and Rio…

[AMcWhirter]

As cityprofessional notes, Qatar continues to take delivery of new B777-300ERs from Boeing and, we reported, the very new ones have the same business class seating but economy class is now 10-across (rather than 9-across).

The seating charts on the Qatar website clearly list the different business classes.

On the B777-300ER they are shown as either 180 or 177 degrees lie-flat.

http://www.qatarairways.com/iwov-resources/temp-docs/seatmaps/template_QR-777–25-20-D-D-0134-REV-11.pdf

http://www.qatarairways.com/iwov-resources/temp-docs/seatmaps/template_QR-777–25-20-D-D-0193-REV-4.pdf

On the A340-600 they are shown as “angle seats” with 165 degree recline.

http://www.qatarairways.com/iwov-resources/temp-docs/seatmaps/template_QR-340-25-20-D-D-0166-REV-3.pdf

On the A330 they are also shown as “angle seats” with 165 degrees of recline.

http://www.qatarairways.com/iwov-resources/temp-docs/seatmaps/template_QR-330-25-20-D-D-0090-REV-3.pdf

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