Airline boss says he hopes to bring ‘world’s best business class’ to Scotland

Scottish travellers can look forward to flying in the world’s best business class from Edinburgh Airport, according to the boss of Qatar Airways in Europe.

Eric Odone said it his “personal objective” to bring the Airbus A350/1000 to the Edinburgh-Doha route, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last week. This would add extra capacity and also bring the much-vaunted ‘Qsuite’ business class.

It has regularly been voted the ‘best business class in the world’, including at the industry-leading Skytrax awards in 2023 and again more recently at the AirlineRatings.com 2024 Airline Excellence Awards.

In an interview with the Scottish Express, Mr Odone – Vice President Sales, Europe – said: “Traditionally it’s about upgrading the aircraft and making sure we can provide the best products so I think the next step for Edinburgh would be to get the top, top aircraft, potentially the A350/1000 with the Qsuite on, which would be wonderful for Scottish passengers.

READ MORE: Top five long-haul destinations for Scottish travellers flying on Edinburgh-Doha route

“It’s not planned but I’m hoping that in the future we’ll be able to do that. Add extra capacity, particularly in business class. We are always looking at optimising and adding capacity.” Asked if he thought Qsuite business class would be coming to Scotland, he added: “That’s my personal objective, I would love to.”

The Qsuites can be single, double, or quad suites. Features include a sliding privacy door, a 21.5-inch touchscreen, a super-sized storage compartment and movable panels that allow guests to transform their suite into a social or sleeping area at 40,000 feet. The adjustable seats can lie flat, upright, reclined or ‘take off’ mode while each suite has a countertop that’s big enough for menus, laptops, pillows, and for use as a dining space for the opulent food and drink served on each flight.

Qatar Airways has carried around 1.4million passengers on the Edinburgh-Doha route since it was launched in 2014, with the split of people flown at 58% outbound and 42% inbound. This means it is both a popular route for Scots travelling on to Australia and the Far East, as well as inbound visitors bringing millions of pounds to the Scottish tourist industry.

Mr Odone said: “The diversification is much stronger from Edinburgh than it is from other destinations. We really sell the entire network from Edinburgh, and there’s no pocket of communities or diasporas that fill up the plane in a big ratio. That’s quite useful, because some routes are very dependent on one community and Edinburgh isn’t, it’s a very solid, steady network contributor.”

‘Turbulence remains very, very rare’

The airline executive also spoke about the risk of turbulence following two recent high-profile incidents. A 73-year-old British man died of a suspected heart attack and dozens more were injured on a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore last month when the plane dropped 178ft in one second.

Days later, six passengers and six crew were injured on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin after it hit turbulence over Turkey. The aircraft landed safely (unlike the Singapore Airlines flight which made an emergency landing in Bangkok) but one passenger said some of those on board hit the cabin ceiling.

Mr Odone said: “Those incidents are very unfortunate and obviously what matters is the care to the passengers and the crew, of course, because they were equally impacted. Ultimately there are a lot of international regulation on what should happen and that was followed so unfortunately it occasionally happens but it shouldn’t be a major area of concern because it remains very, very rare.”

Asked if passengers should be worried that turbulence will become more frequent due to climate change bringing an increased likelihood of powerful storms and unpredictable weather patterns, Mr Odone said: “There’s enhanced technology to detect potential turbulence, there’s things like shared initiatives on optimising flight plans and route planning to make sure that turbulence is identified and in most cases they actually are, that’s why the incidents are very rare.”

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