Joining Qatar Airways after Covid
I’m going to tell you a story. Much has been said here on these boards already about QR, but most of it isn’t very specific, a lot of it clouded by emotion, or the posts didn’t really have a specific conclusion. I’m going to give you a much more detailed report on what you can expect if you join this airline. To establish some sort of structure, I’ll try and tell the story as a timeline and then add a few more details at the end. I’ll start with what happens before you try and join. You’ll go to the Qatar Airways careers page and make a profile. You’ll probably find that you may have some trouble registering, logging on and submitting a profile (you can expect more of these troubles using all of their excreble IT systems later). If you are called for some sort of selection process, after rushing you through some online selection, (varying from a quick Skype interview if they’re desperate, to a complete set of psychometric tests of they are being choosy), they will give you a few dates to choose from for the Doha interview, put you on a shiny new plane in business class and in a nice hotel in Doha, and you will be quite impressed. Just to keep perspective – the business class seat was free for them because it was a standby seat, and they own the hotel so that was free for them too. Sorry if you have to quarantine for a week or two these days. If they decide to offer you a job, you’ll get an unsigned email asking you to be there before your notice period is up with your current airline, or a date within ten days. This is due to their fastidious advance planning. This email will also ask for all manner of onerous documentation including your logbook stamped on every page. This should already be a warning flag. When you write back saying that you actually have to work the 3 month notice period you informed them about before you can leave your current employer, there will be (after a few day’s delay where you are nervously waiting) a reply insinuating or baldly stating that unless you accept that date then you will go back into the holding pool. Or you won’t even get a date, you’ll just be told you’re in the holding pool (think about a fish holding pool – small fish held captive at the fisherman’s mercy – it’s well named). Sometimes you will wait so long in the holding pool you’ll go stale and they will just turf you out again with no notice. Or their IT system lost you. You’ll think you’re in the holding pool still and you’ll write to them asking about when you can expect a date and get mealy-mouthed answers from a different clerk every time but eventually you discover someone neglected to tell you that you had been removed from the holding pool and now you have to wait to be selected again. On different criteria. Or there’s always the chance of you joining the group of pilots who were given a joining date, resigned from their current jobs, sold their houses back home and then a few days before joining being told that there is no job for them any more, due to operational reasons, leaving them totally in the lurch with nowhere to live and loss of seniority. But you take the chance and jump.
So joining date rolls around and you’ve sold your house and burned some bridges but hey, it’s going to be worth it right? Even though you haven’t got a signed contract yet. You get to the boarding gate and you see the crew arrive. The captain looks tired and the second officer (the one with 2 stripes) looks about 19. Or 48. That’s normal for second officers, right? Well, he’s actually the first officer, and you’re about to lose a stripe because at this 5-star airline, it’s different to the rest of the world, FO’s only have 2 stripes. No idea why. But you’ve been promised fast track command! You see the cabin crew, uniform is a bit dowdy and you have a bit of trouble deciding which is the most attractive because there aren’t any attractive ones. Ah well, must have drawn a bad crew, the rest will be okay? (Um, no). At the gate you’re a bit disappointed when your ticket isn’t upgraded this time and you’re in economy. You find yourself sitting next to another pilot and ask if he is also a new joiner. No, he is the relief FO, deadheading back to Doha. The 787 has no bunk and business class deadheading here is on a standby basis and only for flights over 4 hours. That’s written somewhere but nobody’s ever been shown where. He’s not needed for the return flight because it’s only 10.5 hours and therefore well within the duty limits of the two guys upfront who flew into your city 18 hrs ago, so he deadheads back, unpaid. Yep. No pay for deadheading here. No guaranteed business class – crew often enjoy that 15hr return from Sao Paulo or LA in 5-star economy.
So you finally arrive and are driven to your accommodation and when you see Ain Khalid Gate (AKG) or Barwa your heart sinks a bit but you’re told you can apply to move out of company accomodation and receive the housing allowance and go and live anywhere you like. You sure can apply. But nothing will happen apart from you butting heads with the bobbleheads in Housing where you are number 1,351 on the list, which strangely is further back than you were last month. Ah well, AKG it is.. enjoy winter when it floods ankle deep or you get driven crazy by the constant noise of kids or maintenance.
So induction and training starts, and you start to realise there is something different here. The trainers are scared of something? You find yourself in a confusing maze of manuals on the iPad, most of which change every Thursday. (Because moving something from manual A to manual B this Thursday and moving it back to manual A next Thursday is the definition of a lot of people’s jobs in the head office). To find one thing you have to consult three manuals? Which one is correct? You discover your training is sub par (because the instructors are not properly qualified instructors, just line pilots who applied for the job to stay in Doha, and even if you had a good instructor, he’s not allowed to impart his experience to you, strictly only the syllabus) and some of you won’t make it. That includes a high percentage of the Direct Entry Captains (DECs) who join. To their surprise – they’ve always had good SIM scores ? Yeah well, then they weren’t with some palooka FO from Myanmar who can hardly speak English, and the SIM sessions made sense..here not. So sorry, you didn’t make it, your Residency Permit is cancelled and back home you go, tail between your legs, do you want to rejoin your old airline at the bottom again? Is your house rented out to someone else?
For those that make it, and make the Final Line Check, the relief is palpable. The fear culture has already set in and you’re aware that if you screw up, even in the tiniest way, you’re in trouble. You find yourself on probation for 6 months (hey this wasn’t mentioned at the interview?) where you can, and many have, received an email informing you that your services are no longer required, no reason given. Tra la, back home you go, bottom of seniority list again. Now some of you hotshots may be thinking, that’s fine, I’m a good pilot, I won’t screw up. Well, some people don’t, but you have to be lucky. Then you get the ones paranoidly keeping abreast of each and every one of the hundred or so Thursday changes to the manuals and the AirCrew Notices (ACNs) and the emails which change Company Policy daily and know the paragraph numbers by heart. You might not screw up but the other pilot might, and guess what, you’re both fired. In QR, even if you’re the relief crew in the jumpseats, and the operating crew make a mistake, you’re fired or on a final written warning letter.
For FOs who were hoping for a command, such a letter delays your command by a year. So you better hope the guys flying the plane don’t screw up your career. You can get a Warning Letter for not having the right haircut, or watch, or flight bag – the Company that trusts you to fly a half billion dollar machine across the planet employs a grooming checker who sneaks around in the operations room during your sign-on briefing to check that you don’t have a bracelet on or that your socks are black enough. If they aren’t – you get a letter. You can get one for reacting to a Landcruiser who was tailgating you at a distance of 5cm on your way to work (which happens numerous times per trip), or for getting into any altercation with a local when he treats you like something on the sole of his thick soled sandal. You can get one if the cabin crew you were speaking to like a human misunderstood what you said because of their revel 3 Engrish and reported you. The cabin crew have reported pilots for all sorts of ridiculous reasons, including carrying cups of Starbucks at the airport (not allowed), having jackets open or off in public (not allowed – heavy jacket must be kept on at all times, even in 49 degree C heat), not wearing hats, you name it, they’ve screwed the pilots over for the tiniest things. The Captain asked for a cappuccino! Reported. A word about these cabin crew. The ones who get high scores on the interview exams aren’t the target. The middle intellect (I’m being kind here), the mildly unattractive (don’t want problems with them dating other crew) and the compliant are needed. After all, they live in compounds with a curfew and lead a much more precarious life than pilots do when it comes to getting into trouble. Their accommodation is subject to random search. Fired even if a packet of cigarettes is found. Much has been said in the world’s press about their inhumane treatment – as Google will attest. They live in abject fear, and lead lives as little maroon robots, scared even to say hello to you. A recent ACN has banned pilots from leaving the flight deck for anything other than ‘physiological needs’ during a flight because a cabin crew member reported a pilot who was chatting in the galley. Not Allowed. Want to put your yoghurt in the galley fridge? Not Allowed. Any cabin crew report about you will lead to you getting a warning letter – and if an FO, a year’s delayed command. Your pilot managers will always acquiesce to the cabin crew managers. The airline is run by ex cabin crew doing all sorts of specialised duties they are unqualified for such as HR and management. One is even running a whole airport now, and is responsible for all flight crew planning. Including pilots. You couldn’t make it up. The Cabin Services Director (CSD – senior cabin crew on board) is de facto the Commander of the aircraft. Your managers in fact, will not defend you in any way, or protect you from any trouble. They seem to be there simply to process your transgressions. Your warning letter will already be printed before your meeting and be handed to you no matter what you say.
So you make it through your probation and then you start discovering that things you thought you were entitled to like buddy tickets, loss of licence insurance, pension fund, time to promotion etc which you thought started when you joined, in fact will only commence on the day of your Final Line Check, or your probation ending, in 6 months. These just excuses to delay the accrual of any benefit to you, written in some arcane HR manual that you don’t have access to, if indeed written at all. The office minions guard against you getting half a cents worth of anything they can’t screw you out of. It’s like it was their money.
Anyway, what to do (your new favourite phrase), off you go on a trip to a city you’ve always wanted to go to, only to discover your hotel is pretty far away from the actual city. It’s called an airport hotel, but strangely it seems to be some distance from the airport, too. In fact, it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere and to get to the city you have to take a succession of buses and trains which eat somewhat into the 18 hours you have there. After sleeping off the 10 or 15 hr flight, if you’re lucky enough to be awake during daytime at the destination, you’ll have an hour or two (or 2 and a quarter if you’re lucky) to sightsee before you have to get some sleep in again before the return flight, which is just about impossible because you only woke up 3 hours ago, remember? Ah well, that problem will be solved soon by the cumulative fatigue from flying 100hr rosters. 100hrs? Am I joking? Yes, haha, it’s more like 110. Now, about these hours. Just like you gets different airspeeds, you gets different hours. Two parts of the distance speed time equation. If they could they’d screw with the distances too. You have block hours, on which your roster is based, and you have your logbook hours which bear a passing resemblance to them except the inflight rest time is subtracted. The taxi time is subtracted from the IFR time too. You used to get paid for block time. But suddenly and unilaterally, without communication from the company, you only get paid for ‘logbook hours’ now. So for a 15hr flight to LA you only get paid for half that. And half for the return too. So you may as well have done a Europe flight for the same pay and saved the fatigue of crossing 5 time zones. 15 hours plus flights like LA and Dallas used to be Ultra Long Range (ULR) as such flights would be in other airlines, but suddenly and unilaterally (you’ll hear this phase again) they were redesignated ‘Long Range’. Because ULR required 2 days rest before and 2 days rest after so it was a little difficult to roster. So you get to LA, and open your iPad to submit your blank report (QR IT making sense again) and you get the daily roster change and also a kick in the balls email which will be about how bad and unprofessional the pilots are for not taxiing on one engine and how you’ll be terminated if blah blah. Or that you’ve suddenly and unilaterally lost all buddy ticket privileges (no reason given). Or that for operational reasons, the request you made to Fleet for special leave was denied. Or that your Loss of Licence insurance has suddenly and unilaterally been cancelled. Or that Housing advises that you’re now number 2,034 on the waiting list. Or that your swap request was denied. Or that you have a meeting to do with a report that was filed against you. Or that your Medical scheme has been downgraded. Sorry for you. Hey, maybe you escape the day without any of that. But probably not. So the new Roster is out. Great! You spent hours going through the hundreds of pages of trip reports to prepare your bids for flights for next month! What do we have? No bids granted? Again? What’s this? A twelve day cargo trip away from Doha? Omg, what is the wife going to say again? She’s already on your case because of life at AKG and being driven off the road every time she ventures out and when is Housing going to move us and why didn’t you get your leave requests and the school is terrible here and why are you away so much and why are you always so tired? Yet you console yourself with the fact that she’s not particularly worried about any hanky panky with the cabin crew because she’s seen them and doesn’t feel remotely threatened. Well, maybe you can swap out the flights you don’t want? Yes, that would be a possibility if the in-house built (read:crap) swap system would allow any swaps. You discover upon its launch that it won’t allow OFF days to be swapped, or standbys, and the rest of your roster is so tight there is nothing legal to swap it for. If you can log in. Or you find someone who has the perfect flight to swap but alas you can’t fly with the FO or Captain because he’s the same nationality as you, and in QR that is (suddenly and unilaterally) Not Allowed. Oh well, you can still look forward to that NYC flight, it’s one of the few places where the hotel is in the city. Only you get suddenly and unilaterally re-rostered the day before onto a Bangalore turnaround (no reason given). So you fly though the night with the chaotic chatter of Indian ATC for seven hours looking forward to trying to sleep with the AKG kids running around screaming all day, and hoping the other guy doesn’t screw up the landing and earn you both a warning letter.
Then the time rolls around to you making Senior FO. No big deal – it’s an automatic promotion, you get an extra stripe which might stop other FOs at foreign airports wondering why QR has 30 or 40 year old 2-striper cadets, and a bit of extra cash, as the manual States, it’s 3 years in the Company service, and 2000 hrs on their aircraft. Except it’s, guess what, changed to be 3 years from your Final Line Check which happened 6 months after joining, and the 2000 hrs are factored hours, ie. They aren’t block hours, they don’t include rest time. So you thought you had 2000 but you only have like 1300 so you must wait another year. What happened to that Fast Track they promised at the interview? Suddenly and unilaterally suspended. With no notification. What to do? When you do finally reach their requirements, nothing happens for a couple of months until you inquire and are told the promotion board only meets every couple of months so you wait patiently and eventually it comes and you get paid a bit of backpay.
Except in these unprecedented times when you qualified a year and a half ago and are expecting the 18 months backpay only to find that the manual has suddenly and unilaterally changed without notification to include a SIM check before promotion, so you automatically don’t qualify for the automatic promotion, or the backpay any more. (This kick in the balls is separate from any other emailed to you that day).
Now in LA you get a call from crew control that they need you to pax on American Airlines to Atlanta to take part in a freight trip which for some reason is insufficiently crewed. You arrive at AA check-in and discover QR hasn’t paid for a check in bag for you, and you stump up $30, no problem captain you can claim it back, bring the original receipt to the office on your off day. No, we don’t accept scanned emails, sorry. Can’t trust pilots.
You carry on month after month, sometimes getting your bids, most times not, and the 50 degree heat of summer in Doha turns to winter and the weather is quite pleasant for 3 or 4 months. A few years pass by, you’ve become submissive and you are starting to get closer to command. Your previous warning letters have expired and you’ve managed to ward off any new ones, you’ve kept your head down, and now the upgrade process starts. First up, an interview where a panel of judges throw arbitrary questions at you and see how you are and if they like your face. If this doesn’t go well, no upgrade, wait 6 months (officially) to 12 months (normally) and try again. If they still don’t like your face or fail to answer some silly question the way they want it answered again and sorry for you. No more chances. And if in those intervening months you should get a warning letter, sorry for you too, the process is set back another year. All this whilst hundreds of Direct Entry Captains who know nothing about the complex and sometimes illogical QR procedures are being hired ahead of you from gone-bust tinpot airlines all over the world. Some come from short haul 737 operations so you get the honour of carrying them through their first few months on line for long-haul, because, remember, if they screw up, you screw up, and a warning letter is in your future. Some can even speak passable English.
Finally, after months of emotional rollercoaster rides and frantic cross-referencing of manuals and hearsay, and jumping though all their hoops and ad-hoc obstacles, and the nerve wracking line flights, and provided you’ve had decent instructors, you become a Captain. Congrats. Now you find that you actually have no say in any matter, everything is defined as nauseam in one of the many manuals, (except the small matters of your benefits which mysteriously can’t be found). You had better know this library of manuals by heart and you are to follow them to the letter. You will also be deferring to the Senior Cabin Crew on board, and woe betide you if you get into any sort of altercation with them, you’ll be receiving your letter shortly. Basically your new duties include just a lot more paperwork. You’ll be entering the fuel load into the tech log, the journey log, the flight log, sending an ACARS with it, and photographing the fuel slip. You will now be one of the four people reporting why there was a two minute delay. Nothing replaces quadruplicate when it comes to paperwork here. And you will find out that extending a FDP at Captains discretion is actually an assignation not a discretion, and is planned in advance. You’ll also be paired with strange FOs from all over the world who speak 11 kinds of English, none of which you quite understand, who have 11 different interpretations of the Company Rules (as explained to them by 11 different instructors or WhatsApp groups) who will be blithely running red lights straight down Warning Letter Avenue unless you intervene. Some of whom will report you for disagreeing with them.
Let’s look at a few choice areas :
..a continué