Around the World in 100 Hours: Qatar Airways First Class Premium Terminal Doha

Introduction
United Club San Francisco, International Terminal
United Business Class San Francisco to Seoul
Asiana Airlines Business Class Lounge Seoul
Korean Air Lounge and Singapore SilverKris Lounge Seoul
Singapore Business Class Seoul to Singapore
Ambassador Transit Lounge Singapore
Singapore SilverKris Lounge Singapore
Changi Airport Free Singapore Tour
Singapore Business Class Singapore to Colombo
Transiting Colombo
Lotus and Araliya Lounges Colombo
Qatar Airways Business Class Colombo to Doha
Qatar Airways First Class Premium Terminal Doha
Qatar Airways First Class Doha to Dubai
Emirates First Class Lounge Dubai
Emirates First Class Dubai to London Heathrow
British Airways Concorde Room London Heathrow
British Airways Galleries First Lounge and Club World Lounge London Heathrow
British Airways First Class London Heathrow to San Francisco

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At Doha, there are no gates: everything is a remote stand. So when you land, there’s a fleet of buses waiting for you to take you to the appropriate terminal.

They have a separate bus for premium class passengers, although in this case, it was nothing special. Once we started moving, we had a very scenic tour of the airport grounds, as it was an extremely long ride to get to the Premium Transfer Terminal. I don’t know if it was necessary for it to take so long, as we essentially drove the entire length of the airport in one direction, made a U turn, and drove the entire length of the airport back.

If there’s one thing that I regret about this trip, it’s that we didn’t have a very long layover in Doha. Our layover was scheduled for an hour and a half, but by the time we finally got to the First Class Lounge, we barely had 20 minutes to enjoy things, which numerous attendants in the lounge reminded us of constantly.

My first stop was the jacuzzi, since who wouldn’t want a dip in a jacuzzi in an airport lounge? But again, the attendants kept giving me stern warnings that I didn’t have much time left, which did not make me feel very welcome.

To use the jacuzzi, you can leave your boarding pass with a bathroom attendant who will give you a key to use a locker and a “wrap” to keep yourself covered. It was essentially a sheet with some velcro you can use to attach it to itself, but I found that it was much too large for me, so that if I wanted to wrap the sheet tightly around my body so it would stay up on its own, there wasn’t enough velcro to keep it fastened. And then once I got into the jacuzzi, given all of the bubbling and my inability to keep the sheet fastened securely, the wrap was essentially useless. Good thing there was no one else using the jacuzzi!

After approximately two minutes in the jacuzzi and me annoying the heck out of the men’s bathroom attendant with my inanity, I grabbed a very quick bite to eat in the dining room. Since I didn’t have much time, I just got food from the buffet, but the things that I did try were all very good.

Although I didn’t spend much time in the lounge, service seemed like it would have been quite good if I had had a bit more time. At the very least, it seemed polished, as they even provided separate table-side hangers for jackets (which was done for me after I had haphazardly strewn my stuff all over a seat).

By the time I had gotten my plate of food, our flight said that it was already boarding, so I started eating quite quickly. One of the lounge attendants seemed distressed, and I’m not sure if it was because of my lack of table manners or if it was because she thought that I might miss my flight and I was ignoring her pleas to go downstairs to go to the bus to get to the gate.

Anyway, we made our way to the bus gate as our flight said final boarding, and we were treated to a nicer bus than the one that picked us up from our previous flight.

Yet again, however, we found that we ended up sitting on the bus for about 15 minutes before it actually left. And even once we got to the plane, it was quite a while before we actually took off. Alas, I could have spent more time eating/jacuzzing/saunaing. Next time, I’ll have to keep in mind that final boarding isn’t necessarily final boarding in other parts of the world.

Overall, I wish that I had had more time to spend in the Premium Transfer Terminal as it does seem to be a very high quality lounge. The limited food that I tried was good, and it’s pretty awesome that there’s a sauna and jacuzzi in the lounge.