Philosophy here.
you come to Qatar to work.. full stop.. your under the sponsorship (work visa) of the airline and they can control whether you can come or go from this country. Your expected to be fully dedicated to the airlines operations and available when they need you. your family, friends and anything else is secondary. You come to Qatar, you live in Qatar. commuting is not an option. (hence the max 3 days off unpublished rule)
Having said that. In QA that would be the perfect pilot. Yes they can control whether you come or go via mandatory Exit Permits required to leave the country. But there is a option to purchase a Multi-Exit Permit from the company. the only thing is that they can still have it cancelled with just a simple phone call. (you have to be really bad for that to happen)
On occasion the airline does take away your day off and change it to a duty day or completely rearrange your roster with little or no notice and there is nothing you can do about it. depends on the fleet depends on how much that happens. In some cases you can loose your annual leave days as well, doesn't happen that often but it does and has happened.(you still have the days stored but they are removed for operational reasons). remember you come here to work for the airline.
you can request a day OFF for your kids / wife birthday, anniversary or anything similar.. whether it be honored or not is just chance and there is no personal humanity, so get used to it. Thats just the way it is here.
if your single, dont mind bouncing around in a aircraft from day to day. or blindly sitting in Qatar for days of standby with no where to go. If you like working in a place where the only this constant is that nothing is ever constant. then this airline is for YOU.
Poisoned by Compromise
Krunch