EXITDOHA had put a post here a few months back titled
"For Qatar Airways Pilots Old and New"
If you want to go and read the thread, go ahead, but if you don't want to read the entire thread or don't know how to check old threads, then here is what he wrote:
he wrote:
Qatar Airways some facts
You get paid by the scheduled block hour so if your working a 4 sector day say short intragulf flight BAH, DXB, AUH etc…, paired with a flight to a capital in the Middle East AMM, DAM, BEY etc… your scheduled block time will be around 7 hours however your duty time will be around 12 hours 30 minutes and you will NOT be paid for the 5 hours 30 minutes that you are on duty outside of the 7 hours scheduled block time. Not very nice to spend almost 46% of your day working for free. All 3 fleets operate these pairing flights on a regular basis. Also you will not get paid or get extra hotel allowances in the event of any delays downroute.
You will be rostered to dead head on sectors lasting up to 11 hours, with the same report time as the operating crew. You will be required to dead head in uniform and comply with every company regulation there is (and there are many) but you will not get paid for it. So you will be on company time, in company uniform, obeying company regulations for up to 12 hours at a time and not receive 1 riyal for it.
If you're coming for a command you need to be aware there have been no upgrades for the past 18 months and only a handful (to the well connected) in over 2 years. This despite the fact that the airline has been desperate for Captains in the same period. Managements excuse has been they don't have the personnel to run command courses but strangely enough they now have the ability to offer full fly by wire 45 day courses to non type rated direct entry captains. Also be aware that dozens of Jet Airways 737 captains are on the way to take the seats that senior F/O's in Qatar Airways cant even get an interview for. Just be aware that you will be lied to in the interview just as the F/O's are being lied to now, there is no intention to upgrade them, just string them along with excuses, fleet transfers that freeze them on type for 3 years and simulator sessions designed to make sure they stay in the right seat for another 6 months…. at least.
The flight ops management are 90% Qatari, all came from Gulf Air, all got commands with minimal experience a few years ago and all fly about 100 hours a year just to stay current, experienced as pilots, trainers or managers THEY AINT! They spend most of their days behind closed doors and pulled blinds doing what?... nobody knows, well maybe the tea boy that they shout at does. Again be aware they like to
people in the sim regularly either to keep them in the right seat or to show you what you don’t know especially if you've worked at major national carriers for the 40 years of your previous career and have come to Doha for a few years fun before you retire….fun IT AINT! Nobody should deny the right of the locals to run their own airline, but when the locals are as clueless, nasty, arrogant, inexperienced and backward as this lot are then it becomes a disgrace a BIG disgrace, its also disgraceful to watch their few expat lackeys who should know better taking it up the a** from the well connected but largely incompetent local managers just so that they can call themselves 'management pilots', they certainly are making no difference at Qatar Airways. Oddly enough there are some very fine Qatari's flying for the airline but NONE of them work in the office.
The standards on the flightdeck vary widely, in my experience generally average at best. The fear factor at Qatar Airways encourages a protect you’re own a** at all costs environment so you wont find high levels of teamwork or CRM either in the cockpit or the cabin, you will find high levels of suspicion, intimidation and insecurity, you will fly with plenty of pilots who are at 160 knots 12 miles out or 2500 feet 30 miles out just so they don't get a DFDR event and have to visit the safety office (I'm not joking). Airmanship is not a word you'll ever hear too often, follow the SOP's and manuals blindly with no application of common sense and keep that autopilot in 99.9% of the time; this is what they 'teach' at Qatar Airways.
Rosters are from the stone age, they can be horrific, it is perfectly legal to have 2 days off in 3.5 weeks at Qatar Airways, there is no bid system, its easier to scale a large mountain than swap a flight, you'll find yourself going east for the monsoon and west for the European winter as dictated to the rostering dept by the fleet office (they are not independent). Many pilots were promised 8 days a month off at their interviews, some of those same people didn’t get home for 6 months and when they did it was for 3 or 4 days not 8 as promised, more lies and it goes on and on and on………..
Ninety five percent of Qatar Airways staff come from poor countries for a reason, because they are easily exploited by this airline, they put up with more, they are easier to bully and frighten, they don’t say no as often, they have lower expectations when it comes to human and employment rights and because their cheap, all the things that QR want from their employees, it still doesn’t make them happy employees. QR and Qatar is trying desperately to emulate and beat Emirates and Dubai, it’s the only outward focus that an inward looking country and airline has, it hasn’t realized and doesn't have the managers to realize that to do that you have to do it in every area of the airline, not just a few manuals or a choice of 3 starters and French cheese with your coffee. The CEO Akbar Al Baker who presides over this shambles the self proclaimed ‘visionary’ of modern air transport, the small man with the big ego and the blank checkbook was arrested recently in connection with money laundering on the Doha Stock Exchange. Believe me there is not much style, maturity, charisma or flair at Qatar Airways.
You also need to be aware that Qatari landlords are as ruthless as their flight ops counterparts and rents are now about 7500 riyals and rising fast for a decent semi furnished 4 bedroom villa (5500 this time last year). The airline will pay you a maximum of 6200 for housing the rest will come out of your hard earned. Not the airlines fault I admit but a reality you will have to face all the same. Doha itself is quiet, peaceful, and easygoing, the sports fan is well catered for, shopping, restaurants, cinemas are good, it’s very family friendly. If you’re coming with the kids the place itself is ok, if you’re a single party animal you'll find your options pretty limited, Dubai it isn't.
The local native population are a strange bunch, this whole new ‘’Tourism Qatar’’ drive is centered on the famous and unique Qatari Arabian hospitality however in real life you'll never actually witness any Qatari hospitality, never see any welcome to Qatar signs at the airport or in the city, never get a ''welcome to our country'' from them, never get invited anywhere by them, more often than not you'll get the trademark sneer and the thinly veiled contempt that they have for people they don’t even know. This is of course a generalization and I did work with some very nice and decent Qatari's and I didn’t know any of them that well but if their selling the hospitality of the local population to prospective visitors they really need to get their act together, their brothers in other parts of the gulf are decades ahead of them. Other Middle Eastern countries in fact most other countries in the world are way ahead of them in the welcome stakes.
If you’re the sort of person happy to keep your head down all the time, put up with all the injustice and s**t that comes your way, accept that you'll never have a voice, accept that you'll never have any job security, accept that the locals have you here because they need you not want you in their country, then you'll probably do ok. I discovered in my time here I wasn’t that type of person and luckily I have the option to move on soon. I can say with utter conviction that most of the people I have worked with here don’t enjoy it but they don't have the option (passport) to go elsewhere, I know if they did they would. It's not even close to being a good career airline and will never be, not while they have nations of poor people to exploit (China, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, Burma are currently being plundered) and they know it. Its true that globally a career as a pilot is not what it once was but Qatar Airways are taking flightdeck and expatriate employment to devastating new lows.