Qatar Airways revs up Qsuites, free WiFi for Australian flights
The Gulf carrier and Virgin Australia are playing a strong hand against Emirates & Qantas.
By David Flynn, March 10 2025
Qatar Airways is lining up its Qsuites business class and free superfast WiFi for almost all flights to Australia.
And with its 25% stake in Virgin Australia now approved by the Australian government, the Gulf carrier and Virgin will go head-to-head against the longstanding Emirates-Qantas partnership.
The private and well-appointed Qsuites will be offered on all of Virgin’s Boeing 777 flights to Doha, using jets leased from Qatar Airways.
All of Qatar’s own 777 flights to Australia will also feature the Qsuites, a spokesperson for the airline has confirmed to Executive Traveller, alongside Adelaide’s Airbus A350.
And in the event that one of those flights is temporarily swapped to a jet with an older business class, the Qsuite Guarantee allows a free change to another Qsuite flight.
The Qatar Airways and Virgin Australia 777s will also boast free WiFi that’s significantly faster than Emirates or other airlines flying from Australia have to offer.
Qatar has been accelerating the addition of Starlink satellite WiFi to its 777s, delivering average speeds ranging from 30-100Mbps depending on how many passengers are connected at the same time.
The upgrade time per aircraft has been reduced “from three or two days to just 9.5 hours, reducing the retrofit by nearly three-quarters of the initial timeline,” the airline says.
Installations are now being carried out “within a 12-hour overnight time frame” – and with over half of the Boeing 777 fleet now upgraded, Qatar Airways “will complete the full Boeing 777 fleet rollout in the second quarter of 2025.”
Qatar Airways flies its Boeing 777s to Melbourne, Brisbane and, from late June, Perth.
One of two daily Adelaide-Doha services has the 777, with the other being an Airbus A350, while Sydney relies on the double-decker Airbus A380 superjumbo. None of the Airbus jets have been kitted out with Starlink.
Also read: Get Qatar Airways Platinum, Gold status with one flight
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
30 Mar 2015
Total posts 23
Hi All
Do we know if Qatar is planning its own lounges in Australia?
11 Sep 2015
Total posts 270
No rumors on that, and I think a QR lounge would be pretty unlikely for now. Most other cities with dedicated QR lounges have a high flight frequency - eg London is 8+ daily flights, Paris and Singapore are at 3 flights per day, Bangkok is 6 flights per day. The closest we have in Australia is Melbourne with 3 flights per day once Virgin Australia is counted in, so if QR was to open a lounge here you'd reckon Melbourne would be the front-runner.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
16 Mar 2020
Total posts 26
A big disadvantage of flying EK on QF codeshare ex AU is no free wifi - even if in J - the free wifi is only to passengers who use their Skywards membership number in the booking.
20 Jan 2017
Total posts 8
Note that the direct daily flight from adelaide to doha is on the older 777 ( not 350) with NO Q suites and 2-2-2 seating. I had originally booked a Q suite and decided to take advantage of their Q suite guarantee til i found out it was ADL/MEL/DOH/ATH getting into DOH at 1030 pm so having to overnight there ( they would not allow me to take the later MEL/DOH flight which would have had a 2 hr connection to ATH even tho there were seats). I cancelled the trip
22 Mar 2013
Total posts 14
Thanks for the heads up on the equipment change! It seems the 777-200LR is the replacement for ADL-DOH-ADL. Apparently 5 out of 7 of those are still Qsuites, but forward bookings show some with Qsuites, some without - so you could definitely get unlucky.
I'm doing this in May and now very very nervous.
22 Mar 2013
Total posts 14
Wow. Thankyou for notifying me of the aircraft change! Qatar certainly didn't.
It's now a 777-200LR instead of A350 flying ADL-DOH-ADL, with forward booking some look to be the Qsuite fitted version, some don't. Great.
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