Qatar A380 First – worth it?

[Adder]

Planning to fly my dad out to Aus in 2024 on QR. Will be QSuite LON-DOH but the SYD leg is on the A380. It’s approx. 40k Avios to do that leg in F – does anyone have a view as to whether it’s worth it over J?

He’s never flown F (nor have I so no first hand experience!) and probably never will again, but isn’t exactly Avios rich so if there’s not a massive difference compared to J probably won’t bother. TIA!

[Andrew J]

The food isn’t overly different, other than the caviar service. Presentation identical except for a blue rather than a purple water glass. Champagne is better. Amenity kit and PJs and blanket identical. Service more attentive obviously due to passenger ratio and the seat is a lot bigger (as are the toilets). Access to Al Safwa lounge in Doha if applicable is a big step up too.

[xenole]

I’ve flown it once in seat 2A and it’s ok.

Comfy enough, food is nothing to write home about, and neither are the crews, pjs, amenity kit and the ground service. More space I suppose.
Nice enough if you want to try it, but as F goes, there’s nothing that really stands out about it. For a once in a lifetime experience, might be worth it.

Ground wise, no idea if there’s anything special in DOH (do you get to use the F lounge there?).
LHR, LAX, SYD, MEL etc…..pretty much the same lounge / ground experience as a GCH or whatever. Possibly the odd difference here and there.

Don’t think you get any car / limo service either do you?

[emblenworldtour]

My wife & I travelled in F to Doha in November & the experience was brilliant. Not managed to get into the Q suites yet but compared to the J leg to HKG it was considerably better.
The champagne (as in Al Safwa) is a Krug exclusive to Qatar.
We were lucky enough to be the only F passengers so had 3 wonderful crew looking after us. Seats were much bigger than J & the food was excellent. LHR was pretty good, the lounge while small has some nice pre flight options, F check in was really good, especially as I had to try to get my bags checked through to SYD on a different airline from HKG. They arranged it smoothly.
Used the Al Safwa in DOH & that is something that just has to be experienced.
For only 40k more, I’d do it again.

[OldFashioned]

Flown it a few times and while its not Singapore First Class, for 40k more avios its easily worth it. Service in First compared to business even QSuites does not compare, no way it could by the simply numbers game. Al Safwa is pretty good also if you have chance to try it, to me slightly over hyped but still way above anything you would experience in western airport!

Unless you are very avios poor just go for it, otherwise chances are you will spend the business flight wondering what would it have been like! Going forwards there are going to be less and less chances to experience First (for cash or points) so take them when you can!

[Adder]

Thanks all, useful info!