Airports and Airlines

[Cyclefrance]

Can't think why I started this. Oh, yeah, I'm sitting in the middle of Doha Airport, Qatar, waiting for my connecting flight to Shanghai. Just signed in to the WiFi freebie here, so God know who else is reading this. Anyway, local time is 23.20, and I take off at 00.30 for nine hours of flying.

So just to pass time, my impressions of the airports and airline I've used so far.

London Heathrow, Terminal 3 - after the chaos of terminals 1 & 2, no.3 is a pleasant surpise. Quite well laid out, plenty of shops and a reasonabe selectin of food and drink stations as well. Luckily I'm flying business class (what a poser!), courtesy of the company I'm training for when I get to Shanghai, so have been able to use the lounge at Heathrow as well as here at Doha, which leads me to....

Doha - well outside the lounge it's pretty chaotic, too many people for the current place, but they seem to have noticed this as work is well advanced on an extended terminal, so I would expect the place to be totally different in 6 months time. On the plus side, I did get chauffeur driven from the tarmac to the arrivals building in a BMW 7 series - beats strap hanging on a bus!

Qatar Airways - my chosen airline - very competitive on pricing, and I must say that the service is exceptional. I was trying to find a price competitive with the China Eastern Airlines, that the company wanted me to use. They operate a direct flight but the seats only reclined to 120 degrees. Qatar's go to a flat 165 degrees configuration. The price was £100 more than CEA, but CEA could only offer flights on Sunday out and Saturday back, whereas Qatar go daily meaning a saving on hotel bills, so Qatar was given the green light.

How time flies - 11.45 nearly already, and soon be boarding..

I'll try to find somewhere to communicate once settled in Shanghai.

TTFN