Qatar Sheikh delays plane......

[Che Guevara]

Qatar sheikh delays plane over seating :rolleyes:



27/07/2007

MILAN (Reuters) - A Qatar sheikh held up a British Airways flight at Milan's Linate airport for nearly three hours after discovering three of his female relatives had been seated next to men they did not know.
When none of the other business class passengers agreed to swap seats, the sheikh, a member of Qatar's ruling family, went to the pilot, who had already started the engine, to complain, an airport official said.
But the pilot ordered him and his travelling companions, the three women, two men, a cook and a servant, off the plane.
The London-bound flight took off nearly three hours behind schedule on Thursday evening and around 50 of the 115 passengers missed connecting flights.
Traditions in the conservative Gulf Arab region bar women from mixing with unrelated men.

[_FL600_]

Big deal, now we know..what do we gain out of this ?!!!! :bored:

[apaddyinuk]

Well we all know that rule about women sitting next to men only matters when it suits them too!!!

Hopefully that will be one less problem passenger BA will not have to deal with in the future...I wonder if we lost his bags too????

[Al Fakhem]

The qualifications for the position of Sheikh are clearly not based on intellignece or common sense.:mad:

[sirwa69]

1. The qualifications for being a Sheik are the same as those for being a Duke, Baron, Marquis, Earl and other sundry inherited titles. :eek:

2. Well done the Captain for offloading these uncivilised morons. :ok:

3. BA now need to make sure that this Captain is never rostered on the Bahrain Doha flight as he will be arrested as soon as he lands in Doha. :mad:

4. If this asshole does not like his women mixing with others then presumably he also does not like them going shopping in busy malls, yeah right. Perhaps he should stay in safe and secure Doha and forget about international travel :}

On On

[loc22550]

i think next time they should travel in their private jet, so at least those selfish people will not bother other passengers and make them miss their connection for such a stupid issue...

[Dessert Aviator]

Qatari sheik hijacked a GF 767 enroute to LHR some years back; at gunpoint, said his sister, wife whatever wanted to get off!!! the flight originated in Doha. story kept pretty hush hush. Qatar was still a part of GF at the time (10 - 12 years ago). Flight returned to Doha.:mad:

[Chuck Y]

Dessert Aviator a few facts for you.
The flight was from Doh to Lhr, sheikh travelling with sick mother. Her condition deteriorated around Riyadh area. Capt was going to do an unsheduled landing there but the sheikh pulled a gun on him & ordered him to go back to Doh instead.:}

[NO FD NO SRS]

Facts...There was no gun. It was an A340. Jettison did not work so aircraft was holding dirty for 2 hours. there was no medical emergency but he thought she is not well so he threatened to kill all the crew.

[sirwa69]

Didn't take long for this thread to creep :ugh:

Any chance of getting it back on thread :\

On On

[parabellum]

The Al Thanis have always been a pain.

Back in the sixties and seventies they would order a scheduled service on a BAC1-11, F27 and once on a VC10, to be emptied so that the 'royal' family could go falconing, shopping or whatever.
They regarded Gulf Aviation as their personal possession.

(The fact that they sit on a natural gas field that is said to last until the year 2500 may have something to do with this!).

[6_DoF]

May the natural gas field explode beneath them. In five years of being in Qatar I can clearly say I have never met such arogant beings.

[dontevenjoke]

What an idiot.

I can't believe it took the captain 3 hours to boot him off.........should have been 3 minutes!
haha

Cheers.

[mjabbasi]

I'm surprised they decided to fly with 'commoners' on a scheduled pax flight. One would have thought that they would have used one of their own pvt aircraft seeing that the Qatari Royal Flight has the A319, A320, A342 and A345 in its fleet.

[SIUYA]

mjabbasi................

not all of them are as important as they'd like to think. This clown is probably way down on the seniority list if he wasn't able to pull enough rank to get him and his entourage transported by Amiri aircraft.

6_Dof's right..........May the natural gas field explode beneath them

Better be soon though, while it still has enough in it to do so! At the rate they're pulling the stuff out of the ground, the self-indulgence 'party' can't last forever for them. :E

[Super Duper]

Big deal, now we know. what do we gain out of this ?!!!!

I agree with _FL600_ what do you gain from bringing some silly point like this up.


If things really concern you, then how a bout an American president causes the death of two million Iraqis and the destruction of the country and be directly responsible for an irreparable damage to the whole world and specifically America. How do you swallow that? slightly more abusive than delaying an A/C wouldn't you say?:rolleyes:

[Spirit]

I actually thought, that Iraq was about arabs killing their fellow arabs...but I might be wrong, of course?

[SIUYA]

Spirit.............

Great 'response' to Super Duper's ridiculous observation. :D

Ever been in that part of the world, SD, and put up with the sometimes mind-blowing arrogance of some of these self important clowns? I suspect not. If you had, then you'd probably have queried from time to time that Islamic demands for deference to their religious practices and beliefs actually seem to sometimes cross the line where they interfere with others' fundamental rights of liberty, freedom and safety.

And it's not so 'silly' when you look at in that context SD. Where you have an attempt by an arrogant self important prick to impose his beliefs on what appears to be, on the whole, a non-Islamic 'audience' (passengers of the aircraft), then what what you in effect have is a very public interpretation of the Sheik's Islamic beliefs, all by himself to society as a whole, and which regrettably has had the effect of conveying to the World at large an ugly impression of the rigidity, inflexibility and intolerance of Islam.

And surely that's to be regretted, and is far from a silly point if we are all supposed to be getting on with each other, wouldn't you think SD? :*

The Emir needs to get out and have a bloody good arse-kicking party with this idiot Sheikh before he does too much more damage!

[Black Stain]

As I understand, Qatar Airways was created so that poor spoilt little diddums can sit his fat ass in first class, have all demands served with a smile (however industrial), do whatever he wants and abuse whomever he pleases. Just like home! Just like on the road!

Containing bad behaviour within your own airline avoids much international embarressment doesn't it?

[scanscanscan]

I was told Qatar bought 4 L1011 aircraft cash for GF in 1975 and did not require any repayment for 10 years....somehow they then thought that the aircraft were theirs to use as and when they liked.
After a meeting with the operations manager who explained to them the trouble this was causeing they bought their own private VC10.
When asked how they would like the layout they decided to have the same as the Queen and to modify from there.
Sadly they felt poorly treated by GF service flights.... as did DXB when 60 flights a day by GF were cancelled into DXB to aid GF expansion into Africa by a Qatar Ceo.... and both countries soon started planning theirown airlines....as allways communication problems.
British managers allways failed to think big enough for GF and other airlines were needed and allowed to fill the voids.
GF is basically another East African Airways with all its strenghths and weaknesses and it ceased operations.

[411A]

Sad, but true, scanscanscan... I have met several from the old days at GF over the years, and they all basically mentioned the same things...what a shame.

[SIUYA]

scanscanscan.............

I hadn't heard about 1011's bought for GF by Qatar in the 70's. GF did, however, operate 5 VC-10s from about '74 to '79. The Qatar Emir at the time really liked the VC-10. He thought it was an aircraft that 'befitted' his travel requirements and his image perfectly, so Qatar bought G-ARVJ (I think) and operated it as an Amiri aircraft during the same period that GF operated their VC-10s.

Quite frankly, I haven't got a problem with 'Sheikhs behaving badly' on their own (so-called) Royal Flights and using the aircraft as and when they like. They're their aircraft, so they can damn-well do as they please on them as far as I'm concerned. They do, however, need to be reminded that certain minimum standards of behaviour and self-discipline are required and expected of them when they choose to travel on scheduled airline services. :=

Like everyone else I guess?

[fractional]

The Sheikh's (air) Buttler should have booked the seats together... I'm sure he/she(???) could have done or was it free-seating? BA?
These guys (mainly royals) have not learned the lesson. In the mid-80s, one of them slapped a GF senior purser in the first class cabin in front of the other passengers and fellow crew members because of some seat allocation. They were (and still are probably) the worse passengers among the Gulf Nationals. Obviously, there are exceptions as always. I travel side-by-side with some Qataris in the different cabins and so far I had no problems.
What a difference there is travelling side-by-side with the only 2 CEOs QR ever had so far? This is perhaps a very good example.

[scanscanscan]

The worst incident I know of was at LHR.... no action was taken after an Omani gentleman laid open the cheek of the lady cabin supervisor by a slash with his camel whip.
He wished the first class passengers moved to economy so that his team on economy tickets could sit in first class and the supervisor made the mistake of resisting this.
The delay to the flight was long... as GF LHR refused to offload or take any action on Gf Bahrain advice.... also the police at LHR declined to become involved as the incident occured on board.
The supervisor needed stiches so she offloaded herself and never returned to work for GF and the story later was she never got her suitcase back either.
The crew and I spent around six hours in Doha waiting to operate this delayed flight to Muscat and this was the story....the Captain involved was still lived about it all on arrival when he briefed me and he told me he had seen enough and he soon resigned and now flys freight.

[SIUYA]

Something like 16% of air rage events arise from disputes over passenger seating arrangements, and it's usually because the person(s) causing the problem have expectations that their every wish and demand will be catered to 'like royalty'.

Sound depressingly familiar with the idiot Qatari Sheikh's recent behaviour, with fractional's reported mid-80's episode involving another 'affronted' idiot Qatari Sheikh, and with scan(cubed)'s report of the Omani idiot's criminal assault of a CA with a camel whip?

Simple remedy for behaviour like that.................red card (mandatory send off) plus 5 years jail for the idiot if assault's involved. End of story. :*

[Al Fakhem]

Do BA not have Sky Marshalls? Aren't they supposed to restrain/subdue/kill such troublemakers?