Booked my father a ticket on QR 643, DAC-DOH. Applied months in advance for a visa to Qatar (they call it Hayaa), it was fully approved. I double checked the details on the passport: his name on the electronic document delivered by the Hayaa system agreed precisely with what was on his passport and airplane ticket.

Flash forward to today at checkin, the agent proceeded to deny boarding because my *grandfather's* name was off by one letter: think abu-layarus89 intead of abu-lazarus89.

Now we need to figure out how to get the visa metadata changed (quoth the MoI in Qatar: we don't care about the father's name!), buy a new ticket and most importantly, waste two precious days.

Qatar Airways: not bad in the air, but utter jobsworths on the ground.