Qatar Airways

Beware! You must be at the ticketing counter at least 60 min before scheduled departure to get a boarding pass. There’s no online check-in option. I got stuck in traffic and missed a 7:30 pm flight because of this rule. Of course, the ticket counter wasn’t marked when I got there, and it took a bit of time to find the person in a Qatar uniform. When I did and she told me of the policy, I looked at my apple watch and it said 6:32 pm. I saw a disappointed family walking away, and I assume they had gotten there before me. Maybe Qatar uses an analog clock that they can manually set 5 minutes fast? The flight also had an announced delay, so I was still more than 60 min early. However, as I was told, they shutdown the computers at 6:30 pm, and that’s it. I was told the desk was run by contractors—not airline employees—so the only option was calling an 800 number. I had used online check in via the app, and all it included was the customary note that boarding doors close 20 min prior to departure. Nothing mentioned the hard stop at 6:30 pm, which seems very unique to this airline. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the customer service from Delta and Spirit, but I was totally floored by the refusal to issue a boarding pass and omission of key details from the app. With tsa pre check, I would have been to the gate in less than 15 min, so I’m assuming this airline is terrible for frequent travelers. The trip was low importance, and I was able to cancel and get a full refund. It was clear the agent was following the airline’s policies, so I’d definitely be really cautious about using this airline for anything of importance.

This is the worst Qatar check in counter ever. Lack of product knowledge & start harrassing people about carry on bags, even for Qatar platinum member. It’s like flying lowcost airline.

Their system is down & they took forever to call other stations to check how much avios for upgrades, the information can be easily access from Qatar website (my calculator).

They just pick an amount of points to upgrade without even checking your ticket types. Totally unprofesional. The incompentent staff made Qatar looks like a low cost services, which is in fact not true.

Qatar please train these employees, most of them are seriously underqualified compared to other Qatar check in desks worldwide.