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Old Apr 5, 2020 | 4:37 pm
  #25  
bahmad
 
Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 1
Turkish is much better than Qatar

We fly annually from the US to Pakistan.
Over the 8 years, we have flown multiple times with Qatar, Emirates, and Turkish... over time, we have drifted toward Turkish in the latter years.

Of the three, Qatar has been the most notable for poor customer service, flight disruptions, and not allowing more than 30 days to request unclaimed miles (which often happens when your trip is 6 weeks and your initial/outbound is over 30 days by the time you get back to the US).

During this current Covid pandemic, Turkish has been more honest about route changes. Turkish did change our flight, without fee, for an earlier flight when the US state department recommended returning ASAP. However, my family got stranded because Pakistan shut down air traffic for 2 weeks starting 3/28/20, and then during that time Turkish halted all international flights until 5/1/2020. We have gotten timely emails/text messages well in advance of these changes though.

In this desperate situation, we bought two 1-way economy tickets from Qatar Airways (on 3/26 for $5000, serious price-gouging... more than 3 times normal rates) for 4/4 -- the day after lifting of the Pakistani air travel restriction.
However, Qatar Air canceled the day before and blamed Pakistan air shutdown. This was actually false since Pakistan had already lifted the restriction the prior day. Secondly, this was all known at the time of booking -- why did Qatar take the money and issue the ticket in the first place directly from their website? Also, they then sent emails wanting a copy of my passport and credit card statement proving my identity and validity of the charge given the large amount... this was ironic, since I had used their very own website and my next credit card statement would not be generated until after the flight.
It took an act of God to reach an actual person in their Ft. Lauderdale, USA call center eventually, who was pretty rude. The next earliest flight he would give us was 4/21 (since we were not "willing to pay for the next available flight on 4/14 in business class"... at this point, I was too steamed to pay $8000 for two 1-way tickets... three weeks later!! The whole point was to get home asap before something worse happens with the pandemic).

We ultimately have decided to either stick with Turkish in early May, or to see if we can find a charter flight with other stranded Americans...

I will not say that Turkish is perfect... it can be hard to communicate with their customer service staff, since their English is often not great.
However, they genuinely have tried to make efforts to get us home through the entire ordeal. Also, there are little touches that we've noticed from the cabin crew every year during our past trips -- they usually give little gifts to the kids, smile/play with the kids, and just overall seem to be more cheerful/kind/pleasant to fly with than the other gulf airlines (Qatar, Emirates, etc).

In the past, we used to favor Qatar because of Doha's nice airport and international Priority Pass lounge, but Istanbul's new airport is just as nice (and with an even nicer lounge, with a little play area for kids too). So we see all of our future travels happening with Turkish in the coming years.

Times of crisis tend to help differentiate good people/institutions/organizations, etc from the bad.... and in this regard, Turkish has clearly come out on top of Qatar in the opinion of our humble family.

Hope this helps fellow travelers. Good luck and be safe!

Last edited by bahmad; Apr 5, 2020 at 4:41 pm Reason: Typo correction
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