Denied boarding, tricky one
 

Folks

I had an Avios redemption itinerary today

29/11 QR6 LHR-DOH 07:20-17:00
30/11 QR9 DOH-LHR 01:40-06:20

with the intention of having an airside business meeting during the eight or so hours coinciding with my supplier coming in at 23:05 from HKG.

I was denied boarding by Qatar at check in after about 90 minutes of toing and froing between myself, the check in agents, and behind the scenes at Qatar.

Despite the fact that I had no intention of entering Qatar (I also presented a paper copy of my airside transit hotel booking), I was denied boarding, as I was told I would still need to be granted immigration status for travel despite remaining in the transit area. I am a UK PP holder.

OK so be it. I asked QR to make relevant notes in my booking, and as they're sharing T5 & it was an Avios redemption I popped directly over to BA where an agent organised similar notes to add to the booking, demonstrating that I had turned up to the airport with the intention of travelling, but had been denied boarding.

I've just called up the BA Gold line, and after some time I am told I have two choices, either accept the taxes+fees+surcharges-£35 admin charge but no Avios, or make a complaint. The Gold line agent did try to get a voucher for future travel, but that was disallowed.

So I guess my next step, if I am to stand any chance of the Avios refunded or a voucher would be to go through the complaints procedure, unless anyone has any other suggestions?

Denied boarding claim against QR?

I would quickly accept the return of the Avios and leave it at that.

I think you were correctly IDBd. There is a dispensation from various restrictions to Covid for those in transit in QR (notably the requirement to self isolate). You were not in transit by the usual definitions. Moreover if QR could point to one piece of procedure indicating the QR government would deny admission then you wouldn't have much to go on. QR have long been careful, perhaps over careful on restrictions. I well recall having a trip to the USA from DOH, where my slightly unusual USA visa resulted in over an hour of internal discussions, phone calls, photos taken of my passport.

Your ticketed destination was Doha; this was the turnaround point of the ticket and not a transit point.

The QR agents seem perfectly correct in denying boarding without appropriate documentation to enter Qatar

It doesn't seem that BA is offering a refund of Avios

You weren’t eligible to enter your destination country - hence, you were correctly denied boarding as you were not in transit. Sorry to sound harsh, but a same day return is not considered transit.

We had similar issue on Thursday, LHR-DOH-VIE. we were denied boarding. I already filed a claim for the costs, expenses, etc... 7 days before MCOL. On friday i got email saying our documents are in fact OK and to ask BA to reissue the ticket for today or tomorrow. BA wont reissue because we were denied boarding and the policies changed since when we were booked.

Agree.

State of Qatar states very clear that only citizens and residents can return to Qatar. Because you are neither, technically you are a persona non grata for now. So QR was indeed correct in denying you boarding.

FWIW - many countries have separate transit requirements. Just because you don't need to enter the country, it does not mean you don't have to adhere the rules.

For the OP;
I'm sorry, as others mentioned, QR was right. A B2B or a same day connection is never considered as transfer and you always need to meet the requirements of the final destination of your country which in this case is Qatar.

For ​​​​nufnuf77 ;
That sounds interesting, was two flights on separate tickets. Assuming that you were on a single ticket from LHR-DOH-VIE and you're a UK citizen; why should QR deny you on the flight.

The agent said all is fine for both me and wife. final destination slovakia, etc...

the supervisor said they need to get OK from immigration in vienna and slovakia and qatar head office. this took over 24 hours. I argued saying TIMATIC says its ok to no avail. I went over to BA who were incredibly perplexed because they said timatic says we are fine. however as this was QR mistake/fault BA wanted to rebook and put segments on hold and I was told at T5 as soon as QR insert remark into PNR that they will allow us travel that we can go on 28/11 on these flights. However day later when QR did insert such remarks, BA didnt wanna rebook onto QR (and also policy changed) because rev man told them not to. qatar didnt wanna touch BA ticket ewither . i filed a complaint and claim to qatar and also subject access for all notes in PNR because I was once denied boarding and once promised we would travel 2 days later and this was rescinded by BA.

As QR was obligated to carry you only to Austria, I checked TIMATIC one more time and I could also verify that you are denied boarding incorrectly.
This looks like an agent ( supervisor ) fault.

I am wondering how this situation would evolve.

Indeed, thats why BA at airport wanted to rebook but later when we wanted to get ticket reissued didnt wanna help becuase they said a) it's QR issue to resolve and b) commercially rev man says we cannot offer this rerouting of LHR-VIE anymore

If that were the case, I'd have no quibble. Unfortunately, I'm neither being offered offered the Avios back nor a voucher. I'd prefer the Avios, but I'd settle for a voucher.

Similar thing here, a couple of hours sitting about before getting the no-can-do.

The BA rep on the phone when I returned home made a number of wild assumptions about the trip before I was allowed to explain, particularly that she was saying it was a one way ticket, when it wasn't, it was on the same PNR, and that it was the "next day" I was returning, well yes, it was... arriving at 5pm and leaving at 1:40am, not at all an unusual transit time for DOH. That was what frustrated me the most to be honest, the BA rep jumped to several conclusions without trying to understand the situation.

Truth be told, I've done similar trips outside of covid many times where I never step landside, including three or four times to DOH, in fact DOH is one of the better airports for doing it as you can transfer through security without even having a boarding pass.

I guess I'll file a complaint and see where that gets me!

Yes that certainly would be frustrating, but I can see the other side to that, namely that what you are trying to do is by no means unusual in this forum, but in the wider world it's just an implausible thing to do, so I'm not surprised that they couldn't get their head around it. I wish you well with the complaint, and maybe you will get some customer relations gesture. It wouldn't surprise me if you get nowhere with it, had I spotted this sooner I would have said straight away that this was never going to be allowed, and I doubt I would have been the only one to red flag it.

I think you are beating a dead horse, if I may say so. The current entry/transit requirements to Qatar are clearly spelled out. You were not in transit to another airport and you are not permitted to enter Qatar. As a result you were correctly denied boarding. That current rules are a bit stupid is evidenced by the fact that you would have been ok if you had booked LHR-DOH-somewhere-DOH-LHR with similar layover times in DOH.

Hindsight but could this work if you had booked LHR-DOH. DOH - FRA (-LHR) ?

Unlikely given DOH was still the turnaround point on the itinerary (be that to LHR on the return or even to FRA as per your suggestion) and not a transit stop as such. Destination as far as the flight itinerary goes is DOH at which point the return journey commences. This is where the passenger would fail entry requirements under current entry requirements - even if they say they intended to stay airside. With the airline fined for potential denied immigration, no airline will take that chance, even if the passenger guaranteed to pay it themselves.

Must have been a very important meeting for the OP to fly 6 hours in a mask and visor (QR requirements) just to have a relatively short business meeting and then fly home another 6 hours in another mask and visor.

I think that that would still have been likely rejected - the tiocketed destination would still be Doha and so wouldn't be a transit. Would need to be somewhere where Doha was a transit point ; something like LHR-DOH-MCT / MCT-DOH-LHR would be valid ( of course would then depend on rules for Oman as to whether that would be permitted )

It seems valid since DOH would be the ticketed destination for an open jaw return - the destination of a ticket is never a transit point - you can only transit en-route to a destination/stopover point

Who in their right mind flies LHR-VIE with a stopover in DOH anyway?!?! Really surprised this one ever got ticketed in the first place.

Our ticket was LHR-DOH-VIE VIE-DOH-LHR. Under no circumstances were QR staff suggesting we were denied because of Doha transit/rules. I already submitted subject access request so will be able to share details of what the staff putin the PNR soon. But as i say cca 24 hours later, when I was chasing QR ticketing desk I got an email saying they now confirmed and I quote : Dear Mr Nufnuf,

We have now received a response and they have advised that travel will be possible.

You may go ahead and rebook through British Airways.

Why would it be surprising that a same day return be rejected for ticketing? it is just an open jaw return ticket - no more strange than a same day LHR-DOH return

It isn't a oneway ticket to Vienna , but a return ticket to Doha

I assume that BA did rebook nufnuf77 as they have cancelled their direct LHR-VIE service so it shouldn't be an open-jaw return ticket.

Those who prefer not to pay for another last-minute ticket when your flight eventually gets cancelled.
nufnuf77 might have preferred not to get a refund and purchase a separate LHR-VIE ticket on another airline which could be much more costly.

I guess that Dave Noble was mentioning the OP's situation ( LHR-DOH-LHR turnaround ).

What do you mean - we were spending (or planning) several days in vienna to sign some bank paperwork. I dont follow you at all ?

Surprised because that has to be the biggest ticketing backtrack ever if it is a true open jaw. Are you sure that's not just 2 separate itineraries nested to create something that looks like a LHR-VIE return? You can't have an open jaw return. It's either one or the other, not both. Not unless you've nested separate tickets.

There was a provision in rule 8181 of BA tradesupport that allowed QR reroute to any destination as per original origin and destination. this changed i think on Nov18 that only allowed QR on LONG-HAUL reroutes. nevertheless on my days there was not a single option of AY or IB, and BA specifically declined OS option (which I now believe should have been offered as well given guidelines)

Wasn't aware this was an already rerouted itinerary that started as something simole. I failed to notice that part....

Reroutes - if BA offered a QR reroute on that itinerary then more fool them for creating that ability in the first place. Never heard of anything so stupid for even allowing it.

Same for IST-LHR via DOH.
Service wise it's a lovely upgrade but seriously?????

Just wondering, what is the final update on the LH Group rebooking policy. I assume that nufnuf77 could have been rebooked according to that policy as OS is technically a LH Group airline.

I did ask for OS originally, but that policy, when I was rebooking was only for tickets issued prior to date x able to reroute OS/LX/LH. mine wasnt. Now the policy and ticketed deadlines have extended so it was possible to use it at the airport on thursday but agent denied us the OS evening flight saying she can only do oneworld (which we now know was wrong).

Either way QR already denied us compensation by email, so preparing letter before action as we speak ;)

Thanks for the answer. I am curious about how the solution would be.

Thanks,

Despite the disappointment, we are off on LHR-CDG-FRA-ZRH-GRU-BOG on Friday for 10days,(to keep ourselves entertained), with a team offsite in Cartagena over the weekend. It has been a while since i did LX F so will be nice to retry it after LH pulled most of 747s out of the skies.

Don't forget to share your experiences in this thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...offer-all.html
It would be nice to see how Swiss is doing compared to BA

Ive seen loads of examples of this. FCO-LHR rebooked FCO-DOH-LHR. No further Re bookings like permitted now. They even booked into revenue buckets so 280 TP and Avios earnt. Not bad for a cheap RFS.

FWIW I travelled Swiss longhaul F to/from HKG in March on a newly refurbed A340-600, just as the Covid shutters were coming down, https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/32168464-post471.html, a brief synopsis is below: spoiler alert; a great place to sleep, dining not quite so much, but I am sure it'll be far better than BA F at the moment..

I’m wondering why, in the age of the telephone, anyone would fly to Doha for an “airside business meeting”, or is this one of these modern euphemisms of which I’m unaware?

There is still lot of business that needs to be done face to face. There is a reason I fly to Bogota every month and it ain't to take a swim in the Caribbean

The visor isn't required in J between boarding completion and arrival. If it had been, you're absolutely right, I wouldn't have booked.

That's why it's not uncommon to have business meeting rooms in airline lounges.

When choosing a supplier that your business will have some dependence on, call me old fashioned, but there's nothing like seeing the whites of the eyes, even if pressing the flesh is currently no longer a thing. Let me explain...

IME, you only make the mistake of flying blind on a new supplier once, and for me it was an expensive mistake about ten years ago. It'll come as no surprise that suppliers have quite the propensity to over promise and under deliver, sometimes devastatingly so. For example, non delivery on a six month lead time item isn't going to be cheap to rectify either in financial terms or in terms of reputational damage of non-delivery. You can wrap it up in legal remedies all you like, but that's still no guarantee of a smooth transaction. In manufacturing in my particular line, no contract supplier is going to offer any form of indemnity anyway, they tend to offer relatively meaningless gestures after a screw up that don't come anywhere near to the actual cost.

In short it's about mutual trust, and reducing financial & reputational risk. I find that a lot more clarity comes out in the wash in a face-to-face compared to a phone call, in terms of clarity of detail, expectation management, as well as detecting some of those rather more elusive traits.

Would two one-way tickets work: the first LHR-DOH-IST or wherever would let you in, and a second DOH-LHR? Obviously, you chuck the DOH-IST leg.

Because Qatar allows visa-free/visa on arrival (not sure about the exact arrangement) for UK Passport holders. That's why you have no problem at all.

I simply can't see what your complaint can accomplish. Qatari official information has been very clear on this - citizens and residents only for now. And you are neither.

If I was on the other side of the complaint, I would make sure you be banned for life.

Given that it took 90 minutes to deny the OP boarding, would you also fire the check-in staff, plus the station manager and whoever else was involved in this case for not immediately getting rid of the OP?

It's clear that the OP is not allowed into Qatar, and its also clear that the OP was never seeking to enter Qatar. The OP wasn't going to ask an immigration officer to let him in. So it's easy to see how the OP got himself into this situation, and is now a bit annoyed with bureaucracy.

Sure. It is COVID-19 time anyway. Right or wrong - their jobs are at risk anyway.

Booking a flight to DOH as the final destination is a clear, objective intent that OP seeks to enter Qatar, regardless OP's actual plan. Even assuming OP would be there to transit with proof of connecting flights, OP must still adhere the transit formality.

Now Qatar is a persona non grata country for everyone else except its citizens and residents. You can argue what you want on behalf of OP. But based on OP's own words, everything is pretty much conclusive.