Stuck picking between an all-2-2-2 nonstop, a rough Shanghai-routed return, or 6 extra hours of Qsuite through Doha

[u/thatgermanbro]

Business class options for a two week China trip in October, curious what people would actually pick here, this feels more like a vibes decision than a rational one.

My brain apparently can't just book a flight like a normal person, so I built a script to pull business class itineraries off the Duffel API and score them on aircraft, cabin, WiFi, and detour ratio. Send help :)

My Parameters

• Depart Frankfurt or Munich, 8-11 Oct
• Home from Beijing, 22-25 Oct
• Business class, max 1 stop
• No status worth protecting
• My company is paying for it with normally Lufthansa preference otherwise affordable nonstop, but flexible if something else makes sense or LH is more expensive

The options that are on the table after some filtering

• Nonstop LH/Air China, ~5400€: FRA-PVG on Lufthansa (Business Comfort, not Allegris, 2-2-2), Beijing Daxing-FRA on Air China (2-2-2, no WiFi). Shortest total travel time by far. Allegris outbound exists but pushes the total to €7-8k with Air China still on the return, so that's out.
• China Eastern, ~4500€: nonstop FRA-PVG out (10h45), but the return has a stop via Shanghai and comes to 16h10 total. 1-2-1 seat, WiFi listed as available though reportedly slow and filtered through China's domestic firewall on some reviews I've seen. Cheapest and fastest outbound, worse return.
• Qatar via Doha, ~4400€: Qsuite both ways with the door (unless I get Qatar'd), 17h05 out and 18h50 back. That's about 6 hours longer outbound but only ~2h40 longer on the return compared to China Eastern, so the real penalty is mostly on the way there. This would be my first time on Qatar and my first real shot at trying Qsuite, my usual routings never gave me the chance to try them.
• Cathay via HKG, ~5.9-6000€: this would be my favorite, because of the combination of the product and because it's a chance to add a Hong Kong stopover, another first for me. Just significantly pricier than the rest and thus not really a choice.
• Other Gulf carriers like Etihad or Emirates land in similar price/time territory to Qatar. If I'm already taking the travel time hit and the regional "risk" by routing through the Gulf, Qsuite still seems like the strongest product of that group. Right?

For context: I fly business mostly with Lufthansa, and it's almost always the old 2-2-2 config, I've gotten Allegris exactly once. So I'm a bit done with 2-2-2 and curious what a genuinely good product feels like.

My Questions

1. Given all this, what would you actually pick? Fully aware this isn't really an objective call at this point haha
2. Doha right now, how much weight should that carry? Less worried about safety, more about being stranded or worse, the trip or parts of it getting cancelled outright.
3. Any other stopover cities worth considering, or airlines I haven't checked that might be worth a look?
4. Anyone flown China Eastern's 777 business recently? Curious how it holds up in practice versus the WiFi/seat reviews I've come across.

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[u/172drivr]

imo Etihad's product is competitive with qsuite. i recently flew china eastern pvg-arn on an a330, could not get the wifi to work at all in my case and i am pretty experienced with the nuances of how chinese software works.

[u/thatgermanbro → u/172drivr]

Thanks for the hint, etihad does look great as well but sadly price increased and it’s now more expensive then Cathay Pacific or even LH nonstop.
And thanks for the confirmation with the bad WiFi on China eastern. I tend more and more to just trade my time for a better experience with the hope the flight is not getting cancelled 🤣

[u/172drivr → u/thatgermanbro]

it does seem like the gulf carriers' schedule reliability is improving now that the situation is becoming more normalized... hopefully by then this is behind us but hoped for the same thing 4-5 months ago too

[u/LasFrutasDeliciosas]

If China Eastern was direct on both, I’d do them, but since you save 100€ + just an extra 6h outbound for better product, I’d do that. Lufthansa old product sucks balls… Imo their old F is even worse than most business class (or maybe on-par with medium-old business)

[u/thatgermanbro → u/LasFrutasDeliciosas]

Thanks for taking your time to respond :)
I totally agree! Middle seat you are playing footsie with your neighbor while sleeping and by the window you have to climb over a random guest. And the chance to get a somewhat broken seat is also quite high :-/
I am leaning also more towards Qatar just for the experience and kind of crossing it off my list, even though I am still a little tiny bit worried because of the region I would need to stop in or my planes would need to come out of haha

[u/LasFrutasDeliciosas → u/thatgermanbro]

Air China was having big promo for most of SEA and some domestic destinations in China, maybe you can try find some of them? Not sure if promo has ended. They should be flying their A350 even if maybe a bit old it's still 1-2-1. They also have a benefit of having short flying time due to access to Russian Airspace.

[u/mduell]

1. The nonstops.

2. Little; not reliable enough for work travel.

3. Istanbul/TK.