FlyingYan

Is Qatar still worth the premium?
I fly every month from Europe to Asia and I have been a fan of Qatar. They maintained an incredible network and level of service through Covid… But the level of service is recently getting worst and worst. There’s issues on every flight.
Yesterday, one hour into the flight from Amsterdam to Doha, they had no more Champagne. Out of the 3 white wines, only one was available and they only had one bottle for the entire flight, for the entire cabin! The in-flight manager said it’s happening all the time despite reports to Management.
This is coming on top of frequent airplane swaps, when you end up in a 1990s seat while you purchased the Qsuite.
The last few flights included:
- Poorly managed missed connection resulting in having to spend a night in the lounge… while they could have held the connection for 15 minutes only, which would have saved the day for at least 5 Business Class customers and countless Economy pax. I have a feeling they were overbooked and it suited them to have missconnecting passengers.
- Refused entry to Al Safwa while being Platinum booked on a QR flight in Business but missed connection meant involuntary rebooking on MH.
- Dirty socks and nails/skin left in the QSuite out of Manila.
- Catering being wrongly accounted for from Brussels and having to eat the crew meal due to insufficient meals by the time I was eating (4 hours after take off but order taken and confirmed before take off).

With most airlines, this would result in some sort of gesture of goodwill (eg: miles on your FFP account, etc) but QR’s customer affairs department is so incompetent and arrogant that you never get anything (sometimes not even an answer), even as a Platinum member flying only in Business class.

kl1987

I have experienced a lot of the same issues you have mentioned in all my recent flights the past year and even pre-covid. I agree that it has become much worse over the last year.Always the same copy and paste answer, if any, and when replying or following, up no further response. Tried the WhatsApp line and each time just get told that they have sent a follow-up email to the relevant department or have escalated it to the management. Months on end the same situation.I think I have been so persistent as I really didn't want to give up on QR because I too was a big fan. I think however the has come to give up and move on. Maybe the alternatives are worse but I am willing to test it out.
I can however no longer justify choosing them over SQ for example, who are either similarly priced or cheaper on my most frequent route, when I feel like my loyalty and status means absolutely f.... nothing to them.​​​​​​​

florin

It all starts at the top. With a clearly stated intention, substantiated by the right resource allocation (including funding), the customer service part of things (which we all agree is terrible) can definitely improve and brought up to par. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be a priority for QR. Customers shmustomers...

IntrepidAfrican2

Yeah, I’ve noticed the same. On the ground, QR was always touch-and-go, but the the onboard experience always made up for it (maybe more than made up for it), and the fact that they flew almost everywhere they were allowed to during the pandemic was a huge plus.

After the pandemic, I chose not to return wholesale to EK, and fly QR where it made sense, but I’m finding myself flying QR less and less as on ground issues continue and the onboard experience is getting patchier. The lounge access thing is infuriating. I don’t understand why it has to be so complicated for passengers and / or staff.

Still a great airline, but I’m not going out of my way.

tkelvin69

I’ve found the service to be much worse with last flight CPT-DOH-SEA. The DOH lounge had a waiting list to get in. I received an email about a schedule change for the return and I was entitled for a refund of the unused balance. Nobody could/would tell me the amount and when I decline a credit +10% they hung up on me.

kl1987

Edit:QR1364 Turns out it's only the classic brut that is finished. They have just handed me a wine list and they apparently still have lots of Rosé Champagne left. ​​​​​​​
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F1.Cullen

I haven't had the pleasure of flying them as much as most on here (twice), including a couple of week ago on DFW-DOH-CPT. Frankly, I have no complaints. Sure, anyone can nitpick at something, but everything was fantastic for us and given the opportunity, I'd fly them every time, everywhere. We flew UA Polaris back home and the difference is as stark as night and day. Give me QR and their QSuite, hell even their Non-Qsuite any day of the week.

My wife, who isn't an aviation expert with products by any means, commented multiple times on how much she enjoys QR over the likes of everyone else, such as UA.

We will continue to fly QR as much as possible going forward and will happily pay out of pocket next time we go to South Africa if we can't get there on miles.

surryson

I’m beginning to see some roughness now around the edges, onboard… whilst the ground side of things gets progressively worse, to the point that it’s becoming an issue for me.

never mind call centre challenges - ask a member of the lounge staff to print a boarding pass for you or look at a possible seat change within the same cabin. Almost impossible. They don’t have the system access or the training apparently. This is at the Al Mourjan’s btw.

brunos

I flew 4 QR segments a couple of months ago and still find the in-the-air product fabulous.
After enjoying the product several times, the novelty wears off and one always find some little things to comment on.
But the overall product has no equal in my opinion.

arxxxx

To be honest, QR didn't perform well in 2022, expecially the maintenance and customer service.

We all know that QR customer service really pissed us off when things go wrong. I also spotted that IFE/sockets/USB plug failure was more common when I travelled last year.
The IFE screen got locked on the first 1 hr from boarding, universal power outlets and USB plug both was not working on one of my flights last June (I have shared that in another thread before), and the IFE got "hacked" on my flight last September.
The "hacked" IFE was an A380, which is a THALES product. It looked perfectly fine until I tap on my preferred language "English". The screen therefore got frozen and start changing to random languages, such as Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Korean and Japanese. Then, I pressed the call button on the remote. The cabin crew came and she was not able to handle this situation. The safety video started playing by the time the purser came, but my screen was still messing around with different languages. Finally, the issue got settled just before aircraft took off, when the purser pressed the power button for 10 seconds and took 10 mins to reboot the system. What I found out was no apologies from the cabin crew or the purser about the inconvenience caused.

At the same time, does anyone know any destinations that QR operate apart from HKG are currently no lounge access for frequent flyers? There was no lounge access when I flew out from HKG between 2021 - 2022. QR replaced that by a HKD 200 (Ł20) food voucher to be used in one of the shops in the airport, only 3 restaurants in the food court opened when I travel in 2022 and only 2 of them accept those vouchers. The one that I redeemed can only get a burger, a few chips/french fries & a 250ml cup of apple juice. That's $195!
The Worldwide Lounges page on the website has no update yet at the moment. The mainland China destinations including CAN, PVG & HGH have lounge access, depite having less freqency than HKG.

As we get back to normal, but looks like QR is not back to the level of fabulous service provided in 2019 yet. I can't imagine what would happen on my flights coming June & July. I would be very excited to send them thousands of words of complaint letters and calls with customer care if my up coming flight experiences are simlar than June 2022.

brunos

I flew out of HKG in 2021 and 2022 and had lounge access at HK Wing. Maybe because I was OWE.`
I flew QR in september 2022 and again in November 2022. Service in J was back to pre-covid.

DirektornSE

Have flown 50 segments or so since 2021 and the service have become very inconsistent and they have run out of stock on almost every flight in one way or another.
I still consider them a premium airline and, despite having a crew that have been trained to be robots, following their script and still wears mask making it hard to see faces I think they are doing ok

For me, forcing someone to fly AY (that is the ONLY option from Scandinavia in most cases) and not grant access to AS as a Platinum member is a deal-breaker and the main reason, apart form my first point why I'm not flying with them.
I also think they have increased their prices way more than competing airlines in Europe like Lufthansa, Swiss, BA and Air France.

I would also like to see more of their A380 network (And have flown First on this beauty a couple of times was really something special)

IAN-UK

Flight out to CPT in Qsuites the seat failed. No spare seats. Sat upright for the last half of the night flight, and had to transfer to secure seat in economy for landing.

Return flight in a classic 777 the seat squab was so worn and thin my bum felt the seatframe through the seat. Not a comfortable base for a ten hour flight. Insult to injury they ran out of omlettes......

Not quite the platinum service you'd expect.



Seat fail on 2 out of 2 flights suggest a careless approach to cabin maintenance. Got to wonder about the wider approach to more important maintenance.

DirektornSE

Had a F experience with A380 on DOH-BKK (or the other way around cant remember) and the motor control was almost broken, you could hear one gear failing. Cabin Creaw fiddled with the seat like a clerk trying to recover a datacenter (i.e. they had no idea) but when they asked me to leve the seat it work and they kind'a implied I was to fat..... Don't remember the right wording here.

Also had one seat that would not decline, at all for a 7 hour long flight. I would have preferred economy

kq747

You would have rather sat in an economy seat with a couple inches of recline and 32" pitch over a business class seat with a foot rest where you can stretch out and probably without a seat neighbor??