I still remember how anxious crew were when landing into Doha on a Friday, that would mean that Akbar would be roaming around the planes asking random questions to the crew onboard and checking for grooming.
So instead of doing your silent review while landing, you would actually be memorizing the Captains and FO's full name and some other non-sense.
QR is extremely challenging, most of my batchmates have already been sacked or left the company and the ones who are still there are with a very low moral (I can see that everytime they post a new Face book status about going back to DOH after their leaves) ...
Again like someone said, keeping a low profile, thinking about money and creating a good and solid group of REAL friends will save you from getting mad, just prepare your mind to think that you could get sacked at ANY TIME , no matter how clean your record is or how many good 'Tell us' forms you could have on your file.
BTW... IT IS A PROVED FACT that there are lots of spies onboard the aircraft as well, so while on the plane, BE PERFECT.
They are short of crew at the moment (as always) so promotion to J Class is extremely fast and the requirement for crew visa to the US went down from 2 to 1 year, so people are flying like crazy!
Dont be surprised if you see a DOH-TRV-DOH layover and you cant get off the plane on arrival as you will have to operate a DOH-MCT-DOH turnaround after your 5-hour flight or the new double sector DOH-BAH-DOH-JED-DOH, making an average of 145 block hours per crew ( based on crew trained for the whole fleet).
Even some layovers like MEL are a nightmare as the flight is around 14 hours each way and you only get 22 hours there, so all the Aussies are not happy with it as well.
DOH-GRU-EZE which was supposed to be great for most of latin american crew is also a nightmare as the layovers in GRU are too short and time onground in EZE is around 5 hours (GRU-EZE-GRU is a turnaround in the middle of the night).
Just trying to be real in here, I joined QR, I enjoyed and i left, Im not mad or anything as better opportunities opened for me after it, but I also know how handy REAL information can be before making a decision, again, its up to you to take it (I did and dont regret it at all).
Cheers!