Trip Index
Part 2 – Qatar Business Class Flights (IAD-MLE)
Getting to the Maldives was the longest journey I’ve ever taken. 3 flights covered more than 9200 miles from Washington DC. This part of the trip report focuses on the flights on Qatar Airways and how to book the award.
Flight #1 – Qatar Aiways QR 708
Washington DC (IAD) – Doha (DOH)
Depart: 8:45 PM
Arrive: 5:10 PM
Duration: 12h 25m
Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER
Seats: 3A & 3B
Qatar Boeing 777-300ER at IAD
After a brief visit to the Virgin Atlantic lounge (available to Qatar premium class passengers), we made our way to gate A31 at Dulles International Airport. We boarded through the front cabin door and found our way to our seats. The aircraft is setup with 7 rows of business class seating in a 2-2-2 configuration (42 seats) along with 316 economy seats setup in a 3-4-3 configuration. Seatmap by Seatguru.
Qatar Business Class on Boeing 777-300ER
In addition to providing pajamas to business class passengers, we were provided with Giorgio Armani amenity kits. I quickly changed into the PJs as soon as takeoff was complete.
Qatar Business Class on Boeing 777-300ER PJs
Onboard Eats
Qatar Airways is one of the few airlines that provides ‘On Demand Dining’ in business class. You can order anything you like from the menu at anytime during the flight. For dinner right after takeoff I started with the roasted butternut squash soup, followed by the antipasti salad, with the grilled fillet of beef for the main course and skipped dessert since I was stuffed.
Qatar Business Class Dinner Menu
After watching a few movies and getting a solid 6 hours some sleep, I ordered the french toast, orange juice, and a cappuccino for breakfast about 2 hours before landing.
Qatar Business Class Breakfast Menu
Doha Hamad International Airport
Soon enough we were landing in Doha at 5:10pm local time.
Qatar Boeing 777-300ER at Doha Hamad International Airport
In the center of Hamad International Airport is a giant teddy bear which appears to have its head stuck inside a lamp. It’s actually a world-famous sculpture created by Urs Fischer in 2005. It’s cast bronze and weighs 18-20 tons standing 23′ tall. It was previously displayed in New York on Park Avenue before being bought by a member of the Qatar royal family for over $6.8M at an auction.
Doha Hamad International Airport
We made our way through the airport and found the massive business class lounge which was fairly deserted. The business class lounge occupies 2 levels in the airport. There is an amazing spiral feature staircase and reflecting water feature. In addition to a buffet eating area and bar on the 2nd level, there is a sandwich and soup serving area on the first level. There are many seating areas throughout the whole lounge. There is also a prayer room, kids game room, showers, and private area quiet suites.
Qatar Business Class Lounge at Doha Hamad International Airport
Since we had about 8 hours to kill before our 2am flight, we checked out the shops in the airport, ate at the buffet, ate at the soup/sandwich area, took showers, and reserved one of the quiet room suites. As it was getting close to 1:30am, we made our way to the gate for our next flight.
Flight #2 – Qatar Aiways QR 672
Doha (DOH) – Maldives (MLE)
Depart: 2:15 PA
Arrive: 8:50 AM
Duration: 4h 35m
Aircraft: Airbus A330-200
Seats: 3J & 3K
This Airbus aircraft is setup with 5 rows of business class seating in a 2-2-2 configuration (30 seats) along with 275 economy seats setup in a 2-4-2 configuration. Seatmap by Seatguru.
Qatar Business Class on Airbus A330-200
The seats were a little tighter on this smaller aircraft. Apparently the seats only recline to 165 degress and not the fully flat 180 degrees but I couldn’t really tell the difference. We got about an hour of sleep on this short flight. We finally landed in Male at approximately 8:30am local time.
Booking the Award Flights
While the current retail cost of this flight is almost $6300/each -we booked these award flights for 67,500 American Airlines miles before the March 22, 2016 AA changes (currently these flights cost 70,000 AA miles).
You are not able to book these awards on American Airlines website as it does not show Qatar Airways award space. In order to find available award space, head on over to BritishAirways.com. After creating a British Airways Executive Club account (if you don’t already have one) and logging in – click on ‘Executive Club’ and ‘Spending Avios’ as shown in screenshot below. Then click on ‘Book a reward flight’ link in red.
Next you’ll enter your desired flights – don’t worry about selecting the class of service, the results will show all classes. Here is a search from Houston to Doha, Qatar on January 16th, 2018.
The results show us that there are no economy award tickets available, but there are 4 business class tickets.
The next step is to write down the flight numbers and call American Airlines (800-433-7300) to make the reservation. As mentioned earlier, I booked our tickets before the March 22, 2016 award chart change, so I only used 67,500/each per ticket from DC to Male instead of the current 70,000/each cost. Also at the time I had the CitiBank American Airlines AAdvantage credit card which refunds 10% of any mileage redemptions up to 10,000 per year. Since I redeemed 135,000 miles for the 2 tickets, I got 10,000 miles back which brought the overall cost down to 62,500 miles per ticket.
Qatar business class award space is hit or miss and can be a pain to keep searching different days at BA.com. But I recently found an article by MileCards that shows another quicker and easier way to search for Qatar award space – please check out the article and chrome app here.
Have you ever been to Doha? What did you think?
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