Qatar Airways – Doha to Brussels, Business Class

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The Qatar flight from Doha leaves in the early hours of the morning, and in the mess that is still Doha’s new airport, we were bussed from the very farthest gate in the airport. E24 is a bussing gate and arriving at the Boarding Time, after a 15 minute walk from the lounge, the bus was already loading. A 10 minute drive to the B787 Dreamliner, and the bus stopped at the bottom of the forward steps. A 15 minute wait and the bus moved off again, circled around the plane, and then parked at the back door. Oh Joy! Qatar had done the same thing in Cairo on one of my flights. Whilst this arrangement works well for Economy passengers, it leaves Business passengers to fight their way to the front. I have no idea why they do this but it seems to be a bit of a common occurrence.

The seats are in a 1-2-1 config, with the window seats angled facing the windows.

On the seat already were an amenity kit, blanket, bed mattress, pillow and in the arm rest my headphones and a bottle of water.

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This is an image of the centre two seats taken from my window seat:

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The seat has a lot of controls, including the ability to raise and lower the arm rests:

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The table extends from under the Monitor to provide a surface for your meal. The Monitor is large and bright:

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WiFi is available at a cost:

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The cabin, oddly, has two seats on the far side of the exit and so the cabin spans the exits at door 2. The loos are just behind door 2 on each side and are large.

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The loos feature a small changing seat and shaped baby changing table.

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They even have their own window.

The cabin is relatively small, and pretty dark for sleeping. I slept very well in fact and woke rested at BRU. This may also be helped by the Dreamliner’s better pressurisation and quietness.

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The dimming windows worked fairly well, but as much of the flight was in daylight, the cabin was not ‘dark’ in the same way with physical blinds:

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I didn’t eat due to a desire to sleep!

We arrived on time at BRU and disembarked in the main part of the terminal, making my connection to Heathrow simple.

Overall – it’s a nice plane and seats are a lot better on the 787 than on other Qatar planes I flew. The bed is excellent, and the cabin was cool enough for me to sleep well for the short flight. The ground handling was, as always, awful