Background
This flight was booked for a little over $500, including the Kolkata-Doha sector and a two-night hotel stay in Doha (which added around $100 - unfortunately a normal multi city without the hotel stay isn't possible), more background in the CCU-DOH flight report.
After a two day stop in Qatar it was time to head back to Western Australia on the Qatar Airways A380. Next month Qatar will be launching wet lease service for Virgin Australia on this route, but currently of course no airline competes with Qatar here. Emirates flies to Perth from Dubai (like Qatar, with a daily A380) and Etihad used to do so from Abu Dhabi when it was a stronger airline pre-COVID. Doha is currently the longest route from Perth after the European routes served by Qantas.
Enchainement de vols
- 1
- 2QR900 - Economy - Doha → Perth - Airbus A380-800
Qatar was an interesting place to visit, if anyone was wondering, and while I won't get into detail it is worth stopping for a day or two if you're flying through Doha.
The picture below is of the royal family's terminal in Hamad airport. Apparently they still mostly use Doha International.
The non-royal terminal for Qatar Airways.
With this falcon (?) on the other side of the road.
DOH is of course a massive intercontinental hub for Qatar Airways.
The inside of the terminal was a bit empty, most QR passengers are probably just on short connections.
There were reddish carpets at every check-in desk.
To security:
I believe premium classes have their check-in on the other side.
Immigration and security were quite efficient. Back to the area that I saw while coming in.
The airport got a lot busier after passing security because of connecting passengers. I know DOH is meant to be one of the best airports in the world but at least the parts that I saw were average, nice but nothing amazing. Not comparable to Singapore for example.
American Airlines to Philadelphia… that's a flight that I would really not want to take.
The train regularly went by.
A look at the departures this morning, QR is very dominant.
The first flight here is very interesting: Tarco Aviation to Port Sudan. The flight ended up getting canceled.
Here's the gate for the Perth flight… kind of. The flight was actually from C13b, but this gate was C13a which was the wrong gate, but it still had Perth on the screen, so it was pretty confusing and quite a few people had also gotten confused and were sitting at the wrong gate.
There was security again at the gate (but with the metal detectors roped off). There wasn't nearly enough seating after security and many people were sitting or lying down on the ground.
The airport free wi-fi didn't really work, by the way. It disconnected every minute or so and was very slow.
There were blinds on the windows so planespotting was impossible.
A few minutes behind schedule, boarding started.
The creators of the airport seemed to want to make planespotting as hard as possible and so this is the only picture I have of our plane, an 8.9 year old A380-800 registered A7-APG.
My seat for the next 11 hours or so.
There was, of course, a pillow and blanket at every seat.
As on the last flight, the headrest could be moved up and down but the corners couldn't be moved at all, which made the seat a lot less comfortable. Later I discovered that when pushed up, part of it could be angled downwards, not that it really helped.
The seat was pretty similar to the last one. Screen (plus USB-A charging port and headphone jack), remote, tray table, air vent and light, etc.
On both this flight and the last flight I couldn't find any way to control the screen brightness which was quite frustrating. The button that was meant to control it didn't actually do anything. Even when it was bright daylight outside the cabin was kept dark, which made the screen painfully bright at times.
Classic huge A380 wing.
More detail on the IFE selection in the last review but to summarize the content is very limited and poor, very disappointing for a major global carrier and not what I'd expect from them at all.
They claimed to have 8,000 entertainment options but I did a very rough count (the selection was so limited that I got bored enough to do that 😂) and I don't think there were more than a few hundred even if the same movie was counted multiple times for each language it was in. It might sound like a lot, but that includes music, and TV show episodes, and movies in many different languages… it really wasn't very much.
The free wi-fi didn't work.
The crew handed out hand towel packets.
I noticed the tray table was wet with something sticky-looking, for some reason.
Another problem is that the cupholder is in a very inconvenient spot, it's on the half of the tray that's closer to the seat when it should really be on the other half.
The back of the seat had these marks on it.
And there was a bit of trash on the floor.
The plane was in better condition than the Singapore Airlines A380 but not too clean. Worse than the Emirates A380.
The seatback pocket had a sickness bag and safety card.
Headphones were handed out and were not on all the seats as on the last flight.
Amenity kits were also handed out.
The Qatar eye masks are quite comfortable and it's always nice to have amenity kits offered.
Announcements were made in Arabic and English, unlike on the last flight. All the codeshare partners were mentioned and they varied from Virgin Australia to Rwandair. The (entertaining) safety video had a jab at Emirates that I hadn't noticed on the last flight, something along the lines of, "Some of these videos are called no-nonsense (the title of the Emirates safety video). Let's call it what it is: uninspiring, unimaginative…"
We passed a Finnair plane on the way out, one of the few non-Qatar aircraft.
That vague colorful shape is the tail of a Nepal Airlines A330.
Just a tiny bit clearer here.
The royal terminal.
And soon we were off, around half an hour behind schedule.
Pink and red lighting was turned on.
Breakfast service began around an hour and 45 minutes into the flight, which as on the last flight definitely messed up sleeping attempts and took out a chunk of time that people could have slept through. Special meals were served first. I was handed a glass of apple juice without being given any choice of drink which was annoying since that's not what I would have taken and I'm not sure why this happened, the FA had a full selection of beverages.
Almost exactly the same relatively bad meal as on the last flight, only it actually tasted even worse since the main dish wasn't good either.
At least the fruit was nice.
Pretty much the same pudding as the last flight, didn't taste any more edible either. Very poor meal quality.
Same story with the bread.
I didn't use any jam for the butter and put the jam in the pudding instead, which at least made it possible to eat though still not tasty.
Pretty bad meal overall, I'm sorry to say.
I slept for a few hours after the meal. Soon after I woke up there was a beverage run with cups of drinks on trays. They did this three times in the next two hours or so. I really appreciated this.
Sometimes it can be easy to forget that it's an A380…
Cabin view on the way back to my seat. It was bright daylight outside, by the way.
I'd actually gotten up to see if there were any snacks in the galley (somehow they never seem to be available on flights I'm on, even when I see them in reviews of the same flight) and didn't see any. A little while later, though, there were. The FA who was there was very nice, - especially compared to the rest of the crew who weren't friendly at all - he turned on the light and offered me a drink as well.
There weren't actually many candies in the popcorn packet, but the popcorn itself was good even though I don't usually like sweet popcorn.
I got some more snacks a few minutes later.
Not long afterwards, lighting was turned on and lunch was served.
This time it was kids first and special meals served with regular meals.
This looks better than breakfast, thankfull.
The meal was maybe a little worse than average for airline meals, making it much, much better than breakfast and the breakfast on the Kolkata-Doha flight. The dessert (which was the pink thing) was a little sour but fine overall. I could eat everything!
Not much of a view with these wings, other than the wing itself.
Almost there.
You know you're almost in Australia when the biosecurity video is played.
The sun set very quickly outside. All this was within a few minutes.
Purple lighting for descent into Perth.
The crew all sang happy birthday for someone shortly before landing.
Perth!
Welcome to Western Australia!
Alliance Airlines Fokker 70 (I believe) and I'm not 100% sure what the other plane is.
Virgin Australia 737-700
This one might be a F100?
Virgin and Jetstar
The Emirates A380, which arrived a little while before us from Dubai-International with an Air New Zealand 787-9 (ZK-NZF) behind it.
In the distance there was a SAA A340-300, ZS-SXD in a special livery. The plane actually looks like this.
Better view of Emirates and Air NZ.
And finally, right next to us, VA Regional Airlines.
We have arrived.
I wasn't able to get a picture of the plane on the way out, sadly. But I could take one of the welcome to country written on the wall.
These screens keep changing so I couldn't get a clear picture but the text reads:
Kaya, nidja
Whadjuk Boodja
Welcome to Whadjuk Country
Perth, Western Australia
Though as far as I know the Noongar words actually mean "Hello, here is Whadjuk Country"
Immigration was quick as usual and baggage claim was too.
We had lots of codeshare partners.
Customs was surprisingly quick as well, there was no extra inspection or even scanning as there usually is and soon it was time to step into the cool, evening winter air of WA.
Thanks for reading.
