ibling

Recent weather mayhem at Toronto (YYZ) airport severely impacted my travel plans to Mumbai. Long string of delays and cancelations in Montreal (YUL) meant that I never made it to YYZ for my international leg to Mumbai (BOM). Long story short, I was eventually rebooked on Qatar Airways via DOH to BOM. Unfortunately, my Qatar flight (QR 764) sat at the gate, with all passengers onboard, for over two hours! Obviously, I took to twitter to share my thoughts. Qatar Airways reaction to my tweet was extraordinary and eft me equal parts confused and impressed.

Detailed screenshots and reactions here - https://travelupdate.boardingarea.co...-to-my-tweets/


After two of the longest hours spent inflight, I decided to share the situation on twitter;








Qatar Airways social media team replied with the staple response and asked me to share my trip details in DM, which I did. The clock ticked on and I tried to distract my agony by surfing Canadian regulations on tarmac delay. To my utter surprise, my phone rang with a Doha, Qatar number. A lovely rep from the Qatar Airways SM team was calling to follow up on my complaint and wanted to assure me that things will be sorted soon and we should be on our way shortly. She also assured me that I will not miss my BOM connection in DOH. Not really helpful in that situation but I was impressed with the personal call. She also sent me an email contact to follow up in case I wanted to put my complaint in writing.





We eventually pushed out of the gate at 10:22pm, after 3 hours of sitting at the gate (2 hrs and 22 min past official departure time). QR 764 did a good job of time recovery and we landed in Doha only an hour and 24 minutes late. As I deplaned, I was met with two Qatar Airways personnel who were holding my name up! I was greeted warmly by both individuals and one of them identified themselves as the supervisor. He wanted to follow up on my twitter complaint and assured me it was being taken seriously. Although the pilot had confirmed (and apologized) for the delay in YUL due to a mechanical issue, the supervisor was adamant that it was a weather related delay.

Well, colour me impressed. I started wondering if every twitter complaint was dealt with this level of professionalism by Qatar Airways. With only an hour to connect, I politely declined their offer to help ‘any further’, and proceeded to the gate.

It wasn’t over yet – as I approached the gate to board my BOM flight, my boarding pass scanned with a different beep and I wondered if I had been upgraded (did QR upgrade me as compensation?!). Alas, it was no upgrade but a trigger for the floor supervisor of the next flight to personally walk me into the flight and apologize for the delay in YUL. Wow! Again, he made it a point to tell me it was not a mechanical issue, but weather related.

That aside, I did not know what I had said or done to deserve this level of follow up from Qatar. I was truly confused and impressed at the same time. An upgrade would have been nice though

Detailed screenshots and reactions here - https://travelupdate.boardingarea.co...-to-my-tweets/

Traveller999

Absolutely surprising reaction from side of QR. It may be related to the "harsh" customer protection laws in Canada?
Unfortunately I have to say that absolutely NONE of my complaints to QR (via twitter nad/or mail) were followed up that way, neither sorted out. That´s the norm if you deal with QR customer relation department, unfortunately....

citytom

Sounds like a step in the right direction for Qatar, better than I've experienced from any airline, thanks for sharing Traveller999

plunet

I'd like to hope that this - or a subset of this response - is what every traveller tweeting QR could expect, but I wonder whether QR social media sussed out the OP as being a travel blogger and rolled out the red carpet to get some bonus publicity...

Traveller999

This sounds very very likely....

Yemona

Gobber

Very nice attitude, although nothing special was done, right? While connecting at DOHA right at the corridor gate exit/bus transportation point there is always QR staff with either names or next destination written on a paper/tablet to escort/use 'golf truck' for the passengers who are on a brink of missing a connecting flight (I've seen it with other airlines too, it's good if you are running late plus it saves airline cost of rebooking in case you are not making into next flight. A win, win situation). As for the incoming call to apologize and help with filing a complaint, well does it really solve anything beside comfort feeling on being 'looked after'? Btw your luggage are also processed with an additional paper tag which read 'minimal connecting time'. I discover tags last week when I had just an 1hr layover in DOH, plus instead of putting us into security a door was open and we bypassed straight into the terminal, had to use the train from A to D zone. We made it just in time of the next boarding. Very efficient work by QR and truly well done, on a such short layover.

As for the reasons of the delay, usually airlines are not responsible (i.e. no EU compensation) if due to bad weather (force-majeure), however, mechanical fault is not an exemption and airline should cover the cancellation/significant delay.

Then again, if you need to choose between sitting on a plane for 2 hours or have a technical breakdown while in flight I will choose to sit any day in my life! And just curious what you were expecting for sitting out? money? food? letting passengers back into the terminal?

streetmagix

When I was sitting in the (rather excellent) BKK lounge I started to feel a little unwell. Nothing too major, and being British I didn't want to cause a fuss. I sent a tweet to QR Twitter to ask where I should go in Doha if I felt worse when I landed. They replied with a message saying there were doctors in the airport etc. A few minutes later, someone from QR ground staff found me in the lounge and asked how I was, if I needed anything and we arranged for me to see the doctor in BKK airport before flying. I'm not a travel blogger, I have ~660 followers and I general use it to share my own photos and / or memes. It seems like the Twitter team have a lot of autonomy and authority to fix issues, BA are the same with the Twitter team having more powers than outstations and callcentres.

AJ747M

I experienced similar awesome service the other day.

ARN-DOH delayed 3.5hrs due to inbound aircraft diverting to OSL thanks to the snow. Messaged QR's Facebook, and was given a call 5min later and updated on the situation.

Messaged them again 20min later to ask the exact reason for the delay. Rather than respond to my message the same CS agent called me again and explained.

Later on, the QR manager at ARN came into the lounge and explained the delay and subsequent re-bookings to everyone. He also happened to be looking for a "Mr AJ747M". Slipped me a new boarding pass with the nice seat of 4J. My first ever op-up and Q-Suites as well!

Feeling like I may be on a lucky streak, I asked the lounge attendant in DOH how full my onwards flight was. "Oh, I can see you've been upgraded already."

Needless to say, Qatar rocks.

ft101

I think this one is slightly different from the others described. In this case, QR were primarily looking after their own interests in checking a potentially sick passenger didn't board a flight and give the airline problems, perhaps causing a diversion. Similar stories are often met with "don't raise the alarm if you're only a little unwell" as the airline will play safe and offload you (it might even help them out).

Gobber

While I admire the responsiveness of the staff and your sharing of the experience, isn't sending public tweet is exactly 'cause a fuss' vs. asking the same from the lounge host in person? Most probably the same reaction and interactions after, am I wrong?