Qatar A350-900 Doha to Johannesburg

Just stepping on an A350, it's immediately apparent why it's the best airplane in the sky right now.

These planes are made of composite materials instead of being primarily aluminum, which allows them to keep a lower cabin pressure and higher humidity for greater passenger comfort.

Probably my favorite feature is the lack of center overhead bins in the premium cabin.  As you board, you're greeted with a remarkable sense of openness.  In contrast to Delta's A350 configured with suites, I think the A350 is better suited to an open layout.  Not to mention, Qatar added a very nice touch with the circular tray ceiling with mood lighting.

Adding to the openness, Qatar added a classy bar area between the forward and center doors, to which they add champagne and snacks for business class passengers once in flight.  

Despite entering into service in 2014, our aircraft, registered A7-ALA, was outfitted with Qatar's old reverse herringbone business class seats.  Despite the lack of privacy, I actually much preferred these seats to the Qsuites, which I found to be extremely hard and uncomfortable.  I managed to sleep around 7 hours on our 8 and a half hour journey.

Despite having a smaller in flight entertainment screen, this A350 uses a great Thalys system really nice mapping and flight data along with...a tail cam!

From our remote stand, it was a very quick taxi to runway 16R...

And we were on our way to South Africa

I opted to skip lunch and go straight to bed.  At my request, the cabin crew woke me half an hour before we began our descent and brought afternoon tea with a Joseph Perrier Rose champagne.

And before long we had landed in Johannesburg alongside a pair of A380s.