Originally Posted by IAN-UK

I haven't got much time for the video-bloggers: and it doesn't help that they all seem to come with personality traits and quirks that irritate. But because my flying is split more-or-less 50:50 between economy and business classes, I cut Cahill just a little slack for including the occasional economy-class review in his output.

Piqued by comments in this thread I've just wasted 13 minutes of hotel-room time watching his The Shocking Decline of Qatar Airways report. It's over-long, self-indulgent and a tad hyperbolic, but the essence chimes with my own observations of post-covid travel with the airline.

My Platinum padding shields me from the indignity of no choice of meal in economy and earns me a little extra attention, but I do notice the occasional untidy lavatories with wet floors and watch the crew being just a little short with those bewildered first-time passengers with no idea where to find their seats - row 37, down the back with a wave of the hand. In the old days they'd escort troubled passengers to their seats, and as often as not when you entered a lavatory it would smell sweet, the floor would be dry and there'd be one of those paper covers on the seat.

The nice things still happen. There are exemplary crew who really go the extra mile to help passengers, Platinum or not. But it'd be unfair not to cite a significant number of flights where things are most definitely not as they were.

I'm told that a principal cause of slack service is the difficulty absorbing all the new cabin crew recruited in the period post-Covid. And as the airline strives to improve its bottom line by coordinating higher fares and ancillary revenues with lower costs, that latter element has had an inevitable impact on the cabin environment.