Al Baker holds court at new Qatar Airways lounge at LHR

To the unveiling of the new Qatar Airways premium lounge at London Heathrow last night, where chief executive Akbar Al Baker was his customary outspoken self on a variety of subjects from the A380 wing problems to the need for more airport capacity in London, and from soon-to-be revealed economy and business class seats to speculation about the airlines Qatar Airways might buy. My colleague Max Kingsley-Jones MaxABEd has been Tweeting about many of them. We also interviewed the great man on video, which will appear on flightglobal.com very shortly.

The lounge, the airline's first outside Doha, really raises the bar in terms of branding and service. The airline says it recruited staff from five star hotels and restaurants. If you were going to choose your airline on the basis of the quality of the lounge alone, you'd struggle to better this. In fact the only lounge I've been to that arguably has the edge is the Qatar Airways premium terminal at Doha. 

Interestingly, Qatar is doing away with the distinction between business and first class. It has just one premium lounge and all its new aircraft - except its A380s - will be two-class only. Qatar's business class product is "better than any first class available today", says Al Baker.

It is no secret that Qatar - like its neighbour Etihad of Abu Dhabi - is in acquisitive mood after buying its share in Cargolux. But Al Baker resisted the temptation to discuss possible moves on that front. "I don't want to speculate about possible targets because all that happens is that airline's share price goes up," he says.

London is Qatar Airways' most important route and Al Baker had a dig at the tardiness of the decision process on whether or not, or where to build a new airport or runway. "In our region, we build airports in three to five years," he said. The new Doha airport will open later in 2012. "Here it can take 25 years."

He noted the scepticism many industry experts had about the airline's - in retrospect, very modest - ambitions when it launched in the mid-90s. In reality, few, even perhaps on the Qatar Airways board, expected the tiny Gulf state of Qatar to have a fleet and route network in treble figures 15 years later. Al Baker's plea to the doubters: "Please take us very seriously."