Questions and Answers

Lucky,

I have a suspicion that Qatar Airways may be playing dirty tricks with Qsuites seatmaps. I have flown Qatar quite a lot in the past couple of months. On 5 different segments (flights to MLE/LHR/AMS), the seatmap on Expertflyer showed the Qsuites seatmap. Everytime their own seatmap was showing Qsuites. But then on each of those 5 flights, the seatmap would change about 48 hours back to the ‘old’ configuration. One particular flight was interestsing which was an AMSDOH flight operated with Qatar’s high density 777, which has business class only between doors 1 and 2. I believe Qatar has a small number of those and they would certainly know if Qsuites were installed om these planes.

Now on the one hand I don’t believe What Qatar is doing is illegal, and you cannot really access the seatmap on a flight before you make the booking if you are booking directly on Qatar’s website. This will appear for people using OTAs and expertflyer. On the other hand, it seems really weird that the change will only be a negative one (from Qsuites to old business class). I was disappointed and I have to tell you many people on the flights were disappointed that they did not have Qsuites because they were expecting them, and a couple told me they specifically booked flights just to experience the Qsuites.

What do you make of that?