When it comes to hard product, Qatar Airways has some of the most premium Business Class products on their planes, which makes it one of the airlines I do like to fly a lot on. Qatar Airways QSuites have been industry-leading Business Class products and their reverse herringbone business class product is also very comfortable.
Needless to say, a trip with Qatar Airways on business class also entitles you to access to their exclusive lounge in Doha, which is a fabulous lounge, however only J Class customers get access and not oneworld elites travelling economy who are sent to a separate lounge created for them.
The Deli at the Qatar Airways Al Maha Lounge at Doha’s Hamad International Airport
Earlier this week, Executive Traveller got a statement from a Qatar Airways spokesperson, which stated that all reward tickets would be classified as Business Class Classic under their new unbundled business class fares and hence won’t be provided advance seat assignment and lounge access. This obviously took the sheen off from the Business Class travels a bit.
Qatar Airways has now confirmed to OneMileAtATime that their advice was incorrect. In a statement, they said,
We have also not made any changes to award ticket policies as a result of fare family changes. Our valued Qatar Airways Privilege Club members booking a Business Class award flight will receive the same benefits as before including complimentary lounge access and seat allocation.
Bottomline
The sheen of grabbing a Qatar Airways business class reward seat is not gone. It still comes along with picking your favourite window seat (reverse facing is mine), along with access to lounges afforded to other business-class travellers on Qatar Airways. The miscommunication is sorted, and the world is in order again.
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This is not true. Im looking at booking a trip right now, and the classic business class ticket is: no lounge access and no pre seat selection. And they didnt even lower the prices. Its still the same prices as before. And the tickets with lounge access and pre seat selection is almost 1000€ more expensive…
When you go to book business class with cash though- the normally sort of affordable price (though still in the $4,000 range) does not include seat assignment or lounge access and the next highest level of ticket is twice as much in many cases. This seems crazy since the tickets are still quite expensive. I have the highest level of status with BA, so can access the alternate lounges for status holders, but they are not as high a quality. It seems odd they still have the restrictions on their first class lounge for Qatar first class flights which hardly exist and now this restriction on business class tickets for their business class lounge with no push back from any of their partners.