In the ongoing luxury arms race at the front of the plane, Qatar Airways is unveiling caviar service in business class — on just over a dozen of its routes. Caviar will be available “onboard Qatar Airways business class between Doha and Boston, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, and Washington,” the airline said in a statement.

Interestingly, Qatar Airways did not note the national provenance of the caviar it will be serving, nor how much it will load on the selected flights where caviar will be offered: sufficient for every business class passenger?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Fundamentally, adding caviar to business class (on only some routes) feels more like a halo product advertising move than anything else. Qatar is, after all, still flying pre-Qsuite business class products, so it’s clearly not averse to using a bit of halo product effect to its advantage.

Indeed, it’s often informative, when a caviar service is offered, to see how many people decline. Raw sturgeon eggs, like the inside of an oyster, are the sort of food that requires a certain sense of gastronomic adventure. Is it still luxurious if a passenger glances down the menu, thinks “ooh, caviar, how fancy!” and then plumps for something more on the comfort food spectrum? I’d argue that it is, in the same way that not every passenger is solely ordering the Champagne in business class.

Caviar is a little unusual, though, because it’s just the caviar itself that brings the sense of luxury — Qatar isn’t advertising whether this is beluga, sevruga, oscietra, and so on.

It’s a bit like lobster, and here there’s an interesting question that stems from experience aboard Singapore Airlines. There, plumping for the lobster thermidor via Book the Cook is a classic so famous that it’s now infamous. But it’s arguably less tasty in the sky than some of the other Book The Cook options. The lobster can feel overdone, the rice pilaf a little dry, the asparagus a bit brown, and the less said about the grilled tomatoes the better. These are, of course, first class problems, but when airlines are competing for premium passengers, that’s ‘the name of the game’.

Airlines don’t necessarily need to plump for lobster or caviar — or any other sort of very expensive item — for their onboard service to feel luxurious. Expertise, experience and curation are watchwords here, and creating moments that feel special for a passenger can be the very height of luxury. I’m reminded of the luxury hotel where a popular guest activity is washing the resident water buffalo, and no, I am not joking.

After all, so much of the caviar experience is using the mother-of-pearl spoon to deposit the perfect amount of caviar on a soft blini covered in just the right amount of egg, sour cream and shallot, then squeezing your preferred number of drops of lemon juice.

That ritual and experience might be Iberia’s sherry aperitivo service, where a choice of sherries is offered from a trolley alongside Spanish cheese, olives and crackers. It might be TAP Air Portugal’s national showcase drinks cart, or its chinaware cobranded with a 200-year-old porcelain house.

It might be about working with a supplier like fabric experts John Horsfall, who can draw from famous and beautiful prints or patterns held in collections like the Victoria and Albert Museum — and then print them on the same industry-specific fabric where an airline might otherwise choose a workaday pattern.

It might be something like Singapore Airlines’ Fish Ball Kway Teow or Bak Chor Mee soups, or its Singapore Laksa — which sit alongside the lobster thermidor for first class Book The Cook, and which are absolutely delicious.

Fundamentally, much of this sort of move is about a perception of luxury rather than anything more inherent or objective than “vibes”, and luxury can be inherently different between different groups. After all, some might say Emirates’ business class aesthetic is gaudy bling, while others might say it is the epitome of taste. Airlines need to walk the line around differing perceptions of luxury, and that’s a complicated ask.

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Featured image credited to Qatar Airways