Let's tell you a little story about a certain experience on Qatar the other day.
Flew into Doha the other night in fc from somewhere nice, in transit to London. No 2 son was in the back in economy.
Chap behind yours truly had his wife with him in first and after getting comfortably settled, they were told that one of them would have to move into cattle class because first was overbooked and a VIP had to have a seat. The chap protested that he had paid a full fare for two seats but to no avail. The cabin crew became quite rude and eventually she, being by far the shorter, and with great good grace, moved back into cattle class. Before landing at Doha, my by now quite disgruntled friend asked if his wife could come forward and disembark with him in order to ferry in the BMWs to the fc lounge. This was absolutely refused, even though she held a fc ticket and was booked onwards in that class. The logic, if such it might be called, seemed to be that since she was now sitting in economy, she was therefore now only an economy passenger. The wife did actually try to move forward but her way was blocked by two of the cabin staff. Protestations that they were Qatar frequent travellers fell on deaf ears as did the production of his airline executive card.
The no 2 son managed, by dint of clever legerdemain, to ease into the BMW with us and ended up in the fc lounge, even though he was on an economy ticket. The small victory thus obtained was all the sweeter in the light of the treatment by Qatar cabin crew of someone who really did have a right to be in the first class lounge. Mind you, it took some nerve to achieve this, given the hostile nature of all the cabin and ground staff encountered in the excercise.
Whilst one accepts the fact that the cabin crew were probably following orders, such actions and attitudes on their part, whether motivated by fear of management or not, only served to seriously irritate at least five passengers, four of them in first class, who will certainly think twice before wishing to travel again with a carrier that quite obviously has an ethos of bullying both its staff and its passengers.
