Qatar CEO speaks about possible First-Class replacement
Qatar Airways’ CEO Akbar Al Baker has spoken about future cabins, including a possible replacement for the current First-Class section on many of its services.
“First class is not part of the new delivery plan of the airline’s fleet,” Al Baker confirmed in an interview with Forbes magazine. “Instead, Qatar Airways is developing a new product for the narrowbody planes that will be introduced next year. A new Qsuite product is in the works, dubbed Qsuite Phase Two, which has not been released publicly. The product design is being produced now, but the airline will not reveal it until the widebody planes equipped with it arrive”.
READ: Qatar Airways returns to Birmingham Airport
The chief confirmed that the new B787-8 aircraft will not have Qsuites the same as the rest of the widebody fleet, although they will have ‘total privacy’. “There is a lot of physical structure that exists around the Qsuite, which is the challenge for the Dreamliner,” he said.
Al Baker went on to say that the design for the widebody planes will be ‘a revolution of how people travel in business class’.
He also mentioned that while passengers very much enjoyed traveling on the airline’s A380 fleet, they were ‘hopeless airplanes vis a vis cost’. Qatar had planned to retire the superjumbos, but supply constraints saw it return eight out of it’s fleet of 10 back into service.