Joining Qatar Airways after Covid (p2)
ROSTER
There is an in-house Roster bidding system, which works very well at giving 0% satisfaction. There is an in-house Roster swap system which works very well at telling you you’re not allowed to swap. The roster for the full next month is supposed to be published a week before month-end, but due to ‘operational reasons’ sometimes only half a roster will be published, or the publish date will slide by a day or two so nobody really knows when the roster will be out. Great for planning your life. What to do? Wives love this part. Then, during the month, crew control hand you so many changes that by the end of the month, the roster you actually flew bears little or no resemblance to the roster you were given. Due to two Algerian pilots having a fight on the flight deck, a knee-jerk rule stating ‘no two pilots of the same nationality may fly together’ was immediately implemented to solve the problem. This means you have half the chance of getting your own country on a flight bid, because the other pilot is probably also bidding for it, and you may not be rostered together. There seems also to be a rule where people are not allowed to be rostered to their own countries anyway. Whilst it hasn’t been put in writing, in practice many pilots have not been rostered to their own countries for fourteen months plus. What to do?
FTL
There will be sudden and unilateral changes to your FTL laws. Suddenly it was made possible to do a 23-hr and even in some cases a 23:55 FDP. Yep. This was originally for freight turnarounds to china at the start of the covid, but now has since been applied to 18 destinations including African destinations. Anyone fancy flying to Johannesburg and back in one duty? The passengers in the back oblivious to their five-star exhausted pilots.
After a couple of years you won’t even know how many hours of flight time you really have either, because QR insist that you log only half or two thirds of the flight time on augmented sectors, and deduct IFR time for taxi, remember! So your flight time limit of 1000 hrs a year could quite possibly be about 1500 actual hours or more – this whilst other major airlines target about 600-700hrs per year. What to do, Captain? It’s legal. Are you refusing to work?
MEDICAL INSURANCE
There will be sudden and unilateral changes to your medical insurance scheme. QR pilots used to be insured with Allianz, a globally respected medical insurance scheme. Not long ago we were emailed about our change to “Al Koot”, a second-rate Qatari-Indian company who have a nasty habit of not paying claims. Now you have to even pay for the sick certificate. Sorry, Gaptain.
PAY
There wasn’t an incremental pay increase in Jan 2020, as usual it was delayed with no communication and then when covid struck it was delayed until further notice. Suddenly and without prior notice (and unilaterally), we got a 50% pay cut (deferred, we did actually get this back), which lasted for 2 months. Then a “Solidarity” scheme was introduced whereby you accepted a 25% deduction from your basic pay to ease the burden and save some of your colleagues from being made redundant. Which actually did more to save you from being made redundant yourself, because if you didn’t agree to it that’s what would happen to you. This -25% crept into the flight pay somehow too, without ever being communicated. And suddenly you weren’t getting paid for flight hours any more but for logbook hours!! None of this communicated to you, because that’s obviously too hard, management would far more prefer to send everyone threatening little emails instead. Suddenly then, you were earning about 60% of what you were previously earning, and this for the next 5 years apparently. What to do? You can always leave, Gaptain! This deduction had little to zero effect on redundancies anyway, which happened at frequent and perplexingly random intervals throughout the year, and are still ongoing until Mar 21 when the Einsteins who did the planning suddenly realised that they were hundreds of pilots short. Some people went for several months paying this deduction, and then were fired themselves. As previously mentioned, QR also stopped paying flight pay for inflight-rest time (without prior notification). Whereas previously an Australia trip would be 28 block hours return paid, now you only get 14 hrs paid at 75% which is 37% of what you used to get. This is how -25% becomes actually -67%. Bonuses. Don’t hold your breath. Bonuses were paid to the entire Cargo Department in 2019 for making exceptional profit but the pilots who actually flew the cargo were exclusively excluded. There has been no annual increase for 2020 or 2021 either, and nothing has been communicated to the staff about any pay increases or lack thereof. Locals (Qataris) regularly get little bonuses and pay increases though.
Overtime. Because you’ll be flying a LOT harder than you’ve ever done before , you’d expect a bit of overtime pay, right? Well, There will be sudden and unilateral changes to your contract and/or working conditions. For example, the overtime pay threshold for suddenly changed from 735hr to 850hr once the company saw how much it needed to pay in overtime in 2017. So the 115 hours overtime you were owed (that extra month and some of hours you worked during your 12-month year) you kissed goodbye, no complaints allowed. What to do? Overtime for 2019 was paid a year late, with zero communication about that, and there is currently a problem with overtime for 2020 – on last months payslip a small one-liner appeared ‘double hfp’ (hour flying pay). And the amount was not as expected. A lot of people who had flown well over 1000 hrs in 2020 got ZERO. Emails to the Pay department are currently going unanswered, as are enquiries to fleet management (it’s totally normal for them to ignore your emails anyway so nothing strange there). Then an Air Crew Notice was published on the first day of the recent holidays giving a number that could be called after the holidays. The people who answer this number are giving all sorts of lame explanations about how the overtime now has a higher threshold limit, and the way your hours are now calculated changed part way though the year and are now factorised and your flight hours are now your logbook hours minus minus etc, so even if you flew 1200 hours in 2020 but a lot of it was longhaul (and most of it was, the 777s flew to the max, 3 man round the world Trans-Pacific flights, 22hr china turnarounds etc) then you didn’t get any overtime. None of this communicated to the pilots, and it seems they are too cowardly to put the calculation in writing, because they have published a number you have to call to get a private and unique convoluted verbal explanation that will make no sense instead. We call this a Qsense experience.
HOUSING
You’ll find some people mysteriously got to opt out of company housing before you despite joining after you. A recent development is that they are suddenly and unilaterally moving people back into company housing from private accommodation (and of course ceasing to pay the accommodation allowance)(Wives love that too).
TRAINING
Let me just say this. At QR, we even do ditching courses on the iPad. Yep. Can you swim? Check the box! 5-star qualified!
FOOD
The catering on board used to be quite decent, then suddenly it changed and instead of a proper meal we get slung the same Indian style economy food packs, which never change, and get back catered from Doha. So before your descent into Mexico City (which you’ll be doing with anybody but a Mexican – because pilots not allowed to fly to homeland), you’ll be eating briyani (again) that was onloaded in Doha before the start of the first sector, 22 hours ago. Enjoy. After numerous complaints, they came up with a ‘healthy’ box which contained, out of 5 items, 2 items the catering already had. Way to go, original thinkers. This healthy box probably costs a lot and isn’t touched by most crew anyway. Like the other food. The rest of the catering is pot noodles, chips, popcorn, biscuits, bread, chocolate and other unhealthy rubbish. So to stay within the required BMI you have to bring your own food, but pilots are not allowed an extra little bag to put it in, unlike the cabin crew who are allowed two bags and are allowed to store them in the overhead bins. There will be a slimy little man slithering around the briefing room checking that you don’t bring an extra bag. Your flight bag is big enough, Gaptain.
RULES
Will be changed suddenly when they prevent a situation which benefits QR, or if QR is in contravention of them. If a situation arises which benefits you that isn’t prevented by one or more of the spider-web of rules, an ad-hoc rule will be created, dubiously translated from the original Arabic rant, published by email and elevated to the Operations Manual the next Thursday.
You must be ready to operate after minimum rest on a layover...so technically, no drinking, at all.
Pre-covid, you may not be more than 1hr away from the hotel. Nowadays, you’re not allowed to leave the hotel premises. Hotel staff have been instructed to report crew who leave the hotel for any reason. This rule suddenly extended until December 2021.
You’re not allowed to do all that much, actually. If you have a request, nine times out of ten, it’s not allowed, only reason given ‘operational reasons’.
They will change any rule at any time to suit them. Your contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
They make things up as they go along and then they believe it. Just to picture you in on this by example, they change the departure time of a flight if it is delayed, sometimes multiple times, so that it’s not delayed. Then at the end of the year they award themselves a 5-Star award for on-time service. All of the 5-Star awards are similar flimsy and dubious circle-jerks, many of the votes being akin to ‘paid likes’ by migrant workers who travel once a year.
Now for the Covid-19 appendix to the above. When the virus started in Feb 2020, the CEO here denied it’s existence. Crews were not allowed to wear masks. As countries went into lockdown, QR was one of the lone players flying in and out of a lot of places, mostly with 777s. QR became the Official Carrier of Covid-19 as one wag put it. The 320s, 330’s, 787s and 380s were grounded, and the 350s flew sporadically. In March Qatar suddenly closed its borders 3 days earlier than they had previously indicated they would, and a lot of pilots were locked out. Chaos reigned. But the 777 crews continued to fly, pushed way beyond normal Flight Time Limitations (FTLs) suddenly and unilaterally by email advising them that they would be doing turnaround flights to china with Flight Duty Periods (FDPs) of up to 23 hrs. The world’s longest previous duty before that had been the QR Auckland-Doha service of 18 hrs, superceded by the Singapore airlines Singapore-NYC service of 19hr. Qantas had been trying for a couple of years to push Operation Sunrise, Sydney-London direct which would have been 20hr. For this they’d done test flights with monitors attached to crews, consulted medical staff, etc. QR simply emailed us and told us were doing 23hrs duty from now on take it or leave. What to do? Later came almost 24 hour flight duties. Crews even did 32hr duties, for example, flying to the US and deadheading back immediately. 777 crews that is. Then came the news that we were to get 50% of our salaries deducted. Even those who were doing 120hr monthly. ‘Logbook hours’. Also, annual leave was suddenly and unilaterally suspended until they decided to allocate it themselves to reduce the company leave debt. For the non-flying fleets, a week or two of your annual leave per month was allocated unilaterally, but nobody could go anywhere anyway. On the 777 rosters, a day or two at a time of annual leave was often used in place of OFF days on the roster. Sort of like replacing weekends with annual leave for office workers. Sort of like blatant theft. It would have been understandable had the annual leave only been deducted from those who were not flying or were locked out, but to steal that annual leave from the 777 pilots was unforgivable, and clearly shows that operations management is so club-footed and clumsy that it can’t interpret a higher general operational order to reduce the annual leave debt for aircrew, and the 777 fleet management didn’t speak up for their crews who were not idle and were flying to the max, to preserve their leave.
Simultaneously, crew control were given an absolute free hand, all rules were thrown out of the window and they could do anything with your roster including not even publishing it, or making you fly on a rare off day. Authority for this being a mystical ‘management’ email. Thirty or forty roster changes a month were common. Sleep was rare. And make one complaint and you would be shown the door. I have seen with my own eyes a complaint by Crew Control against a Captain “Refused to Fly on Leave Day”.
Dismissals started to happen, but in a sneaky and opaque way. People’s rosters suddenly got cancelled, nobody was told anything, for a week or two they were sitting at home wondering what was happening, and then they’d get a call to go to a meeting and be told that they’d been made redundant. I’m not going to bore you with details of how this process was mismanaged to the max by the 5 star HR team (who, coincidentally have just won an international award for ‘Brilliance in HR’ – it’s enough to make you puke) but suffice to say when they made people redundant here during Covid, they didn’t communicate it above more than a general email from the CEO saying there would be layoffs. For the pilots, you suddenly got your flights removed, TBN (To Be Notified) inserted on your roster, were left to stew for a few days, contacted a few days later, and equally as suddenly you were locked out of your iPad and all company apps, so things like emails, payslips and staff tickets were instantly inaccessible. When you went to the Operations Centre to collect your papers, there was a special roped off section to keep you segregated, with security guards in attendance, because you were immediately persona non grata, a suspect, and an ex-employee leper. One of the main consequences of laying off pilots in dribs and drabs, unlike other airlines where all the pilots to be laid off were all laid off in one tranche, or two tranches, was a heavy psychological load. Pilots were reluctant to speak up about anything, or even take extra fuel, for fear of being on that week’s list of redundancies. In this environment, they were abused to the maximum by crew control (rostering) who simply threw all the rules out of the window, removed OFF days at will, rostered pilots for ridiculous duties, cut flight pay, cancelled leave, assigned leave in place of legal off days, secure in the knowledge that nobody would complain. Where was the Fleet Management support?!
Getting a roster bid is very rare nowadays, and is the one thing that would go a long way towards retaining pilots, but they can’t seem to be bothered making this work, and seem to have a ban on pilots flying to their home countries. They also put ridiculous arbitrary ‘management’ restrictions on swaps, which are just about impossible to do.
Since they suddenly realised they were hundreds of pilots short, they started to recall pilots they had dismissed barely 3 months before, late last year or early in 2021. So these guys, who had been cruelly shown the door for no reason given (except for the knee-jerk need to reduce numbers, even though their colleagues were giving up about 40% of their pay to try and preserve jobs – a blatant lie), and had to uproot themselves and their families post haste back to their home countries in the midst of a pandemic, selling all their possessions and vehicles at a loss, were (and indeed still are) being brought back at
1. No seniority
2. Minus 25% pay (basic AND flight pay)
3. Only Company accomodation available
4. $50k bond to sign if they decide to put you on a different type (they don’t tell you this)
Pilots on 6 year Captains pay are now getting less than an FO that weathered to storm and didn’t get retrenched. A few of these rejoiners have already left and most of them say they will stay at QR only until they get another job and then they are gone. Most didn’t bring their families back, and some only came with one suitcase with the intention to get current and then dump QR as it dumped them, the wheel turns. QR is an exceedingly unhappy ship, the main problem is that the pilot fleet management has balls the size of electrons and will not support their pilots in any way, shape or form. One small ray of light was the appointment of the new VPFO, who at least addresses the pilots with respect, and I feel would move in the right direction to create a happy, motivated fleet of pilots, purely by implementing changes which would not cost the Company a cent, such as sorting out the deadheading problems, the bids, and getting rid of the ridiculous same-nationalities-may-not-fly-together rule which must be having an extremely adverse effect on the number of pilots need to run the roster and is in any professional pilot’s mind simply absurd. Also by rectifying the ‘group punishment’ mindset. One pilot has a device malfunction on the flight deck, all pilots not allowed to charge any device on flightdeck. One pilot misbehaves in crew rest whilst being a passenger, all pilot not allowed to use bunk whilst being passenger. One person caught selling buddy tickets, all people’s buddy tickets removed for a year.
What is wrong with just punishing the guilty?
Upgrades – in previous years, they used to upgrade pretty well. That was then. During the last three years prior to Covid they did however employ over 200 Direct Entry Captains (who were among the first to be made redundant when Covid hit). Now they are bending over to save a cent and are also about six months to a year behind on their training. They’re outsourcing training because their Sims are fully booked training pilots they just made redundant a few months ago (in cross-type cases also making them sign $50k training bonds) (on their minus 25% salaries) so upgrades are the last thing on their minds. Don’t join here as an FO if you’re expecting an upgrade within 10 years. Over the last couple of months they have shifted over 100 Airbus Captains to Boeing when they suddenly discovered they had fired too many Boeing pilots.
Are you starting to get the picture? Some may think I’m being overly negative here but I promise you, all of these things have happened to me or are reliable first hand accounts. Those of you who aren’t familiar with the Middle Eastern/Indian management style may think I’m exaggerating about warning letters, but that’s how this place is run, on fear. A warning letter is a good outcome for many transgressions here, a lot of the time you’ll just be terminated. Suddenly and unilaterally. You are going to be a startled victim here many times. You have little defence against the sneaky subcontinent business ‘ethics’ and zero against the heavy handed Qatari law. This company feels zero for you, anything you do will be wrong if they deem it so, everything they say is the law. They change the Operations Manual whenever and however they like, literally every Thursday.
Because people from first world countries usually figure out fairly quickly that they are being treated like slaves they don’t stick around for long. Qatar Airways thus employs people mostly from third world countries, this is who run the airline’s admin and all departments (good luck trying to get anything done through this Level 1 English morass of CYA where the default response is ‘not allowed’). Ergo, QR is actually just a third world airline with money to buy new equipment, but then are penny wise, pound foolish in operating it. The five star accolades are all very suspect, and are generally acknowledged by those in the know as bogus. They even demand your old shirts back after 2 years on a uniform reissue, or make you pay for them.
You’ll doubtless be thinking very hard about taking any new job, and will be evaluating all aspects of it. What I’ve given you here is an honest report of how your life will be at QR.
A lot of the stuff you couldn’t make up, anyway. What I haven’t gone into is how life is in Doha itself, outside of Qatar Airways. But, in short, be prepared to take many deep breaths and put your real life on hold for the duration of your tenure at QR. Far better to stay in your home country, or a nice, normal country, and have a decent life.
To summarize : Don’t join Qatar Airways.
As things are at the moment, the pilots here are still being robbed of flight pay, having leave cancelled, flying insane rosters and 22 hour days, are still having benefits curtailed, are still being made to deadhead without pay in economy class (for 15 hour flights), are still being governed by bizarre Qatari CAA exemptions that allow QR to roster you into discretion prior to the flight, are still flying from minimum rest to minimum rest and are still having upgrades cancelled (FO to SFO) or delayed (SFO,FO to Capt). Don’t join here if you’re an FO hoping for an upgrade within a decade because they prefer to hire DEC's. It’s apparently cheaper, the subcontinental superstars have figured, despite 7 decades of other airlines not doing it for very good reasons. Don’t join here as DEC unless you’re prepared to take the fairly high risk of getting kicked out as soon as (a) they don’t need you any more and/or (b) you put a foot wrong, which is very easy to do with their always-changing-thousands-of-pages-manuals. Don’t join here if you want to see the world – you’re not allowed out of your hotel at any destination until the end of 2021 and perhaps longer. Brought to you by an unsigned crew notice. Don’t join here and think that you’ll be treated with respect, or that you can improve things, or think that you may be listened to... your emails won’t even be answered. If you do join be prepared to forfeit any life apart from being a flying robot for QR. Shut up, keep head down, and do exactly as you’re told, get prematurely old, and in some cases, die. What to do? That. Don’t smell the perfume, smell the whore. This is an airline that paid Boeing extra to remove the inflight entertainment screens from the crew rests.
Being a long haul pilot (or perhaps any pilot) was always a passion. All of us joined here with the best of intentions, and would have served with loyalty, honor and pride had we been treated with respect. But here it’s just a kick in the guts every week and if you don’t like it, leave. So why do we care now?
Being a long haul pilot was also a lifestyle – people didn’t become pilots to be the CEO. They sacrificed the traditional career progression in a non-airline company where there was ample opportunity to become a senior manager for a two-tiered airline position – FO/Captain – and for the lifestyle of travel and no set routine. Now that ‘lifestyle’ is ‘no longer valid’ – even after the Covid restrictions end, the tightening of the roster screws, the never-granted bids and the cost-cutting on the hotels have pretty much out an end to it. You will have no life at QR, let alone lifestyle. Their attitude towards their employees is that they own them, 24/7/365. You’re a slave. Every single contact you have with QR will be negative. You have to say yes to everything, they will say no to everything.
It’s like a prison. You even have to call the guard when you want to pee. If you want to spend 5 or 7 years in a prison, rather rob a bank or something, go to a real prison, and get a decent night’s rest every night. The food is just as crap but you’ll earn more and you won’t have constant iPad LMS training to do either.
Seriously reconsider your career moves, stay at home if you can. If you do feel you need to come to the Middle East, go to Emirates instead. You’ll at least be flying with crew you can relate to, pilots and cabin crew.
To the management who read this. Unprecedented times required unprecedented good management and you have failed miserably at even normal management. You can’t manage a fleet from the coffee shop. You can’t manage people if you never answer their emails. Get over the anger and realise the truth that you are not doing your job and see the frustration and the hurt your current policies and/or lack thereof are causing thousands of pilots and their families who are basically trapped in your abusive system until they can get another job and leave, which is what hundreds plan to do. We can’t talk to you, you don’t listen, you don’t respond. When we get a response it’s always ‘regret due to operational reasons’ or ‘its legal captain’. Enough is enough. I and others like me are going to spread the word and prevent others from being sucked into this maelstrom of 120+ hrs flight time rosters, zero life, constant fatigue, lies and disrespect. Spreading the word on social media is the only option that will have any effect. So expect this, and in powerful form, across all media until things change. Sort it out. You are going to see pilots leaving in their hundreds very soon.
Start with sorting out the flight pay, just restore it. You’re stealing 25% from us. With full flights and 120 hour rosters, and QR sponsoring all manner of sports events, there is NO excuse for covid-reduced pay any more. Fix the rosters. There is ZERO life-work balance. Fix the bidding system, it’s important. Sort out the deadheading. Any economy class deadheading should not be allowed. Especially long haul. Set a standard pay for deadheading. Get rid of the stupid nationality rule. Communicate to us. Engage with us. These things are not difficult, you are not applying yourselves. Sort things out, make your own jobs easier, and better, and more rewarding. It’s not as difficult as you think. Look in the mirror and be the change. Leave a respected legacy.
A message to everyone who is going to comment with, “you’re lucky you have a job”, “you’re just negative” etc etc : I care absolutely rocks about what you think. The purpose of this missive was to tell the truth about QR, to describe how you can expect your life to be here if you join, to reveal in detail how QR behaved towards loyal staff during this current pandemic, and how life is here. I have done exactly that.
As for QR’s dedicated team of IT social media worms and spies who will literally create social media profiles pretending to be attractive women and try and ‘friend’ you (so they can catch you posting anything to do with QR on social media) – you’re pathetic. Get a real job. And remember, when you tell the truth it isn’t libel.