Qatar Airways introduces caviar in Business Class as the quality gap keeps widening

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• Steve says:

  14 Aug14 August 08:12

  Is this another nail in the coffin for Qatar First Class? At this point there isn’t too much differentiating QSuite with First Class – now even less.

  • Rhys says:

    14 Aug14 August 08:21

    Well, they keep committing to introducing a new First Class in the next few years…

• Clare says:

  14 Aug14 August 08:17

  Will this service be provided on flights from Gatwick which use Boeing 787’s ? I expect not.

  • Rhys says:

    14 Aug14 August 08:33

    It’s being used on routes with a variety of different aircraft types.

    • Clare says:

      14 Aug14 August 09:13

      I’ll let you know whether we get it on our flight from Gatwick on 4th September.

  • MKCol says:

    18 Aug18 August 17:11

    Why do you have that expectation?

    • Rob says:

      18 Aug18 August 18:46

      The press release says ‘London’ not ‘Heathrow’. However it seems that Qatar is going to dump Gatwick now that it has bought another daily Heathrow slot off Tarom.

• Ian Faulds says:

  14 Aug14 August 08:20

  Back in the day I believe Cunard would buy more caviar than anyone else in the world!!!

  • Paul says:

    14 Aug14 August 13:01

    It is still available in Queens Grill but only if you know and ask. It is not on the menu…but then when dining in QG it is rare to eat from the menu if you know whats what.
    The QM 2 crossing over 7days in a QG suite is still the best way to cross the Atlantic. IMHO

    • planeconcorde says:

      14 Aug14 August 15:01

      +1

    • Alex G says:

      14 Aug14 August 20:19

      Is it still possible to get “French Fillet” in the QG?

• Tony says:

  14 Aug14 August 08:20

  On Iranair on the 747 years ago, there was a wonderful English senior cabin crew called Ginny. She served caviar in First with a great extra touch…with HP sauce….it worked…delicious!. I love caviar and HP sauce sandwiches!!

• Numpty says:

  14 Aug14 August 08:24

  Flew Cathay Pacific first class from HKG to LHR a few years ago, and was served caviar. The steward walked past and realised my champagne glass had not been topped up for the caviar and offered a genuine apology and would i like another serving of caviar (this time with champagne) – i declined, but that was a flight with amazing service.

• Occasional Ranter says:

  14 Aug14 August 08:31

  Haven’t been offered a menu in ce in last 8-10 flights !

  • Tom says:

    14 Aug14 August 09:11

    They are only part of the service procedure on certain flights – i) domestics (because of the need to display calorie information and ii) the longest flights (I think band 3 and 4). They are not offered on any Cityflyer flights also.

    • Occasional Ranter says:

      14 Aug14 August 13:56

      That makes sense, thanks

• NorthernLass says:

  14 Aug14 August 09:14

  Well, I like all of that except the actual caviar 😂

• Duck Ling says:

  14 Aug14 August 09:20

  I find this issue of creating noise and hype from Qatar around something that few of their passengers will actually experience becoming tiresome.

  Every blog out there has jumped on the hype ‘Qatar introducing caviar in Business Class’. Yet, read on and it’s on THIRTEEN routes. A sliver of its network. In fact, crunching the numbers based on their self-proclaimed 170 destinations, JUST 8% of routes will be offered this enhancement.

  It is exactly the same issue with their hard product. The variation out there – from QSuite to 2x2x2 on some 777’s – is a disgrace and the way they swap around aircraft and product annoying.

  I wish they would just focus a little more on getting some consistency in their offering.

  • NicktheGreek says:

    14 Aug14 August 09:41

    You know what you’re doing here, but to suggest it’s “few” of their customers is clearly disingenuous. With 6 flights a day from LHR, 3 from CGD and 3 from JFK, just as examples of the multiple daily frequencies, there’s clearly more than a few customers that’ll have this option….

  • Rhys says:

    14 Aug14 August 09:42

    Just 8% of the route network, but a far higher percentage of overall business class passengers because these are the biggest destinations, served by the largest aircraft, with the most number of flights. Then you factor in that this is long haul service only as well.

    I wonder if I can actually do the maths on this – let me have a look.

    EDIT: Qatar has 413,176 business class seats across its network for August 2024. Let’s assume that flights under 2,000 miles (around 4 hours) do not get long haul service, which leaves 328,651 business class seats.

    Of those, 87,856 seats are routes offering the new caviar service, which is just over 26%.

    That’s not factoring in load factors, of course – I imagine business class cabins to London and Sydney have a much higher average load factor than many others in the route network, so arguably the impact is even greater.

    • Duck Ling says:

      14 Aug14 August 10:08

      Please do!

      Regardless if it is 8/15/27% it won’t get anywhere near the majority of long haul routes served.

      What about Tokyo or Frankfurt? Are these not in the same ‘deserving leaugue’ as London or Paris?

      • Rhys says:

        14 Aug14 August 10:25

        See my edited comment above!

        Frankfurt gets half the number of daily flights that London does, and on smaller aircraft too. Tokyo, meanwhile, is only served once a day. I imagine Qatar will have based its decision on routes that generate the highest revenues, although caviar availability might come into it too I suppose.

        • Duck Ling says:

          14 Aug14 August 13:11

          And to be fair from a business rationale, that may be acceptable – ‘hey, we are going to offer this enhanced catering on a few select high yielding routes’.

          But from a customer service standpoint, it doesn’t fly. Revenues and yields over an entire flight can be derived from economy and business combined. There will be both low and high yielding Business Class passengers on all routes depending when and where they brought their ticket. And more so, the final destination.

          Joe Public that doesn’t participate in these kind of blogs and forums will likely see the headline ‘Qatar offers caviar in business class’ and then be peeved off when his expensive FRA – DOH flight doesn’t offer it because the service varies route by route based on ‘frequency and revenue’.

          I have never heard of airlines that ‘enhance’ the catering on a specific set of routes. Of course some airline offer an enhanced catering service on routes FROM their hubs only but this tends to be on all instead of a select few.

          IMHO they should not have even released a press issue about this and just featured it on the menu on the routes that offer it as the headlines tend to be of the ‘Qatar to offer caviar in business class’ variety which insinuates that it will be a general thing. Hats off to HfP who at least mention that it will only feature on select routes, many blogs aren’t even mentioning that aspect.

        • Rhys says:

          14 Aug14 August 14:37

          All the blogs I’ve read mention it is limited to certain routes.

          It is a bit like how longer routes often get more meal services etc. I don’t see a problem offering it on some routes. If Joe Bloggs can’t be bothered to read past a headline then that’s his problem!

        • Duck Ling says:

          14 Aug14 August 14:57

          We will have to agree to disagree Rhys.

          Everyone would understand that flight length can be a factor in what level of catering is offered (although even that doesn’t seem to play a part in this as for example DOH-SYD/MEL will dine on caviar but those travelling DOH-ADL/PER/AKL will not).

          There are other reasons one can understand a different standard of catering such as passenger demographic – flights to India/Japan/Korea/China etc will usually have an offering more to that country’s tastes.

          But to offer a universally recognised ‘luxury’ catering item to certain routes which we are assuming may be based on revenue or frequency (yet this is just an assumption and has not been stated by Qatar themselves) just leads to inconsistency. And you’d think that an airline like Qatar would be striving for the opposite – an element of consistency.

        • Rhys says:

          14 Aug14 August 15:27

          I have more issue with the inconsistency of the Qatar fleet than I do with them serving caviar as an additional course on some flights, to be honest.

          The hard product is more of an essential aspect of the experience whilst caviar is a ‘nice to have’.

          Of course, we also don’t know what Qatar’s plans are for this. No mention of whether they want to roll it out more widely or not.

  • Cranzle says:

    14 Aug14 August 16:44

    BA is not different. Hyping new uniforms (who cares?!), new cabins (club suite announced in 2019, hasn’t been fully rolled out and those that have been are falling apart and look very worn) etc. Yet the staff are below par both in attitude and service, they serve frozen and burnt food in premium cabins and they don’t clean their planes (perhaps they think leaving the previous passengers crumbs for the next passenger is some type of new service whereby you can snack before the inflight service begins?!)

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