The short and easy answer here is that Turkish Airlines beats out Qatar Airways by miiiiiles, across comfort, service, and hub airport.

On our journey to Saudia Arabia for our Umrah pilgrimage, we flew via Qatar from JFK with a layover in Doha. On the way back, we flew Turkish from Medina to JFK with a layover in Istanbul.

Both flights consisted of Boeing 777, except Qatar’s plane was outdated and economy seat layout was 3-4-3. Compared to Turkish’s B777 3-3-3 layout. This made a huge difference – on Qatar’s we felt like cattle being herded onto a school bus with flight attendents that were frankly rude to some older folks. Notably, the seats on Qatar had nearly 0 cushioning, they looked worn out to the max – I mean the cushion was pretty much flat to the seat backing. It was not comfortable whatsoever.

We hadn’t noticed this until we flew Turkish on the way back but the bathroom on Qatar’s B777 was also considerably smaller and… less clean. One of the bathroom’s sink was clogged the entire flight. Whereas on Turkish, the bathroom had a window (which in itself made the room feel much bigger and airy) but also you had much more room to move around. Bathroom also smelled great, which was a nice surprise. Because airplane bathrooms never smell good nor inviting.

The infotainment system on Qatar felt outdated, with laggy Touchscreen and confusing menu. While the movie/TV selection was solid, it just wasn’t worth trying to utilize the system (we brought downloaded movies on our tablets anyway). Small detail to consider – while Qatar had a two-prong headphone jack, Turkish had a standard audio jack.

The flight from Medina to Istanbul consisted of a good percentage of older folks, who were definitely not frequent flyers. We thought the crew was super helpful, had a great attitude, and was stern when necessary without yelling or becoming upset. Same couldn’t be said about the flight from Doha to Makkah, which had a similar flyer profile on board.

As we spent very little time at Doha, it wouldn’t be a fair comparison to Istanbul’s brand new airport.

But one major negative for Turkish (but really more Istanbul Airport) was the boarding process. Can’t really even call it a process as there was none. Triple security checks – once just to get to the gate area, then another before getting to baggage & pat down station, and finally the actual station where they go through all of your carry on and personal items and pat you down. Followed by extremely unclear boarding instructions, misguided lines, people being told to flip flop from one side to another, then ultimately just trying to get everyone boarded at once. JFK certainly attracts all sorts of people so this really no surprise but it was the least efficient and optimal boarding of any airport or airline… Other than JFK itself maybe.

Overall, if flying over to Asia or Middle East again, if it’s between Turkish or Qatar, we will most likely choose Turkish. The seat layout alone is worth never flying on a Qatar B777. Now, I’ve heard Qatar Airbus flights are completely different, so there’s a chance they might redeem themselves on a future flight.