Our flight to Atlanta was on a fairly new A350-1000 equipped with QSuites. These are Qatar Airways best business class seats (although in my opinion not their best business class beds) and allow two people to sit together in almost a double bed configuration facing backwards, which is what we did for this flight.

On our last attempt to do this, my seat turned out to be broken, so we ate together as a family, but I had to spend most of the flight in a different seat. This time, things seemed to be OK, but there’s a twist in the story later.

Boarding was again fairly unorganized as they called Zone 1, but it seemed like some of the other zones were trying to board at the same time. Thankfully, there was a separate jetway for business class, which made things a lot smoother.

We were in seats 3E and 3F again, but this time they faced backward. We flew that way on ANA The Room last year and it didn’t bother us. In fact, I find the sleeping position better as your head is slightly elevated. Just like on the previous flight, there were no center bins and therefore no center overhead air vents. If that’s important to you, book seats along the windows. We’ll probably do that next time now that the novelty of the “double-bed” seats has worn off.

The lovely flight attendants brought us amenity kits and pajamas. I went ahead and changed into mine and realized they were different than the last set, with a Formula 1 branding.

The Dyptique amenity kits were in a proper reusable bag and different for men and women. I apologize that I did not get a picture (I was pretty tired by this point), but the contents were basically the same as the prior kit.

The seat had much more storage than the prior reverse herringbone seat. I’m sure you’ve seen a million pictures of a QSuite by now.

QR 755 A350-1000 DOH-ATL
Scheduled: 7:35-15:15 (-8 hours)
Actual: 7:53-14:53 (-8 hours)

The flight attendants brought around Arabic coffee and dates, which was a nice touch.

We took a look at the menu, which was much longer and more varied than the prior flight. The soft drinks and cocktails were the same so you can refer to those on the prior flight review.

The flight attendants took orders for our first drink and meal service. As Qatar offers a dine on demand service, we both decided that it felt more like lunchtime as it was past noon in Bali. As we took off, I decided to watch Saturday Night, the movie about the first SNL episode. I tried to use the provided Qatar headphones, but they were terrible. Thankfully, my Bose noise-canceling headphones worked OK plugged in to the IFE system. The movie was great, as long as you are of a certain age and recognize all the real-life people portrayed in the movie.

For lunch, I ordered the Arabic mezze followed by the Qatari chicken jareesh. For dessert, I had the ice cream sundae. Sorry about the lighting.

This was probably my favorite in-flight meal of the trip (Cathay caviar aside). The mezze is always a good choice on a Middle Eastern airline and the chicken dish was delicious and just the right amount of spicy.

After lunch, I reclined all the way and slept for a bit, but I found the seat uncomfortable for sleeping as the joints between the sections have large gaps which made it hard to get cozy. When I tried to move the seat back up to watch TV, the electronic functions weren’t working. I realized I had left my shoes between the seat and the foot cubby and unlike the prior flight, there is no gap there when the seat is fully reclined. I got some help from the flight attendant to move the seat into somewhat of a reclining position. She told me that they have a lot of issues with these seats breaking, although I blamed myself for not moving my shoes. Thankfully, my shoes unsquished themselves and weren’t ruined.

After another couple of hours of watching shows on my iPad, I was hungry again so I decided to have the afternoon tea with a cup of herbal tea.

I asked the flight attendant if there was an open seat I could use to nap in and she found 1A available. It was very nice of them to let me move over there and I was able to get a few solid hours of sleep. The overhead air vents were nice to have as well.

When I woke up, it was around 10am in Atlanta, and we had about 4-5 hours left. I moved back to my seat and my wife and I both had breakfast. I had the fruit followed by the croffle, which was very good. Bakery items were served as well. I also had an iced latte to try and wake up a bit.

For the remainder of the flight, I stayed in the recline-ish position and binge-watched American Primeval, which I had downloaded from Netflix. When we were on our initial approach into Atlanta, the purser came by to manually raise my seat into the upright position for landing. I feel bad for whoever had my seat on the return flight to Doha as they probably were moved like I was when my seat was broken on the prior flight.

We landed a bit early and taxied to Concourse F where we got through Global Entry very quickly and our checked bags were some of the first ones on the carousel. I got extremely lucky when I ordered an Uber as there happened to be one right there at the international terminal, which is unusual. We got home about 90 minutes after we touched down, which is probably a record for us on an ATL international arrival with checked bags.

I hope you enjoyed this Bali trip report. We had a great time exploring the island and got a chance to try some new and luxurious airline products and lounges on the way there and back. Up next for the empty nesters, we’re headed to New York then Washington DC for some family visits. Then we go our separate ways in July as my wife and younger daughter are headed to Germany and Poland on a women’s group trip to see some historical sites while I am doing a YOLO solo trip on Emirates, Qatar and Etihad in First Class. I’ll have more updates as that trip comes together.

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