Qatar Airways eyes new A380 business class

Qatar Airways plans to keep flying the A380 for years to come and will upgrade the superjumbo to make it a better fit for the Oneworld member’s fleet and passenger’s expectations.

Former long-standing Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker was keen to keep the A380s grounded after the pandemic, going so far to describe their purchase as “the biggest mistake” in the airline’s history.

Speaking with media at the airline’s launch of the Qsuite Next Gen business class, Al Baker’s successor Badr Al-Meer admitted there was a plan to once again scrap the A380s beginning this year.

However, Al-Meer now sees a very different future for the double-decker jet, with eight A380s from an initial fleet of 12 expected to continue flying until at least 2028 – provided high levels of demand continue to fill most of the superjumbo’s 517 seats.

The A380 has been proving its worth in the post-pandemic travel surge due to delays in the production of new Airbus and Boeing jets.

While not a modern suite design, Qatar's A380 business class remains a solid product.

Drivers of renewed demand

Speaking with media following the airline’s launch of the Qsuite Next Gen business class, Al-Meer said the A380 was particular well-suited to capacity-constrained airports such as London Heathrow, and called out Australia’s current cap on Qatar Airways flights as creating another strong scenario for the A380, which today flies daily between Sydney and Doha.

(As previously reported, Qatar Airways is now seeking government approval for an additional 28 flights per week to Australia, under a proposal to deliver one extra flight per day into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.)

While not a modern suite design, Qatar's A380 business class remains a solid product.

With all that in mind, Al-Meer said “The decision was made to extend the operations of the A380 and to make some modifications to it.”

Up for consideration is a refit of the cabin, including elevating the A380’s original business class seats to suites with sliding doors, larger video screens with bluetooth streaming, wireless charging and all the other mod-cons.

Al-Meer confirfmed that options for the A380 cabin upgrades were current being looked at, saying “we’re discussing this internally to see how we can address this.”

It’s unlikely the A380 will see the adoption of the latest Qsuite 2 or even the original Qsuite due to the dimensions of the upper deck cabin and the curvature of its walls.

However, this still leaves plenty of scope for Qatar Airways to tap an off-the-shelf product with a smaller footprint for limited customisation.

In the meantime, Qatar will move ahead with the addition of free super-fast WiFi, which is also being rolled out across the broader QR fleet over the next two years.

Qatar Airways’ new inflight WiFi system will be powered by Starlink – the communications satellite arm of Elon Musk’s SpaceX venture – using a constellation of ‘micro-satellites’ to deliver speeds in excess of 100Mbps per passenger for a true ‘broadband in the sky’ experience.

“On A380s that we operate in Qatar Airways, the WiFi is not as fast or as strong on the other aircraft,” Al-Meer admitted, “so the first project that we will undertake immediately is to upgrade the WiFi service on the A380.”