Qatar Airways Under Fire For Banning Famous Aviation YouTuber Josh Cahill

On this occasion the standards on board were below those normally expected (and normally found on Qatar Airways) and the negative report thus generated was hardly unexpected. How surprising that Qatar Airways has completely overreacted to the criticism and turned a recoverable issue into a public relations disaster. How much easier to have issued a simple apology with a statement that they would work night and day to ensure that it would never happen again and that maintaining their reputation as one of the world's top airlines was of paramount importance to them.
We all know that occasionally things do go wrong - saying sorry shouldn't be difficult.

How to turn one bad review into a major PR disaster.

Obviously it wasn't shocking enough for him not to book another flight with Qatar. Qatar needs to get over themselves and realize that maybe some crew re training may not be such a bad thing. Perhaps they need another customer relations chief that understands the value in turning around a negative review.

Qatar have discovered the Striesand effect!

Up to Qatar to decide. He is lucky it was not Thai Airways or he could be arrested on arrival in BKK and sued. Each country has different laws, many people seem to forget that. Some things about Qatar that some people here may not know. About 7000 Asian people did die during the construction the foot ball (soccer) world cup. Qatar is hosting the top Hamas people and is a main sponsor. They are not friends with the other Muslim countries in the area as they do not share the same views. Qatar owns the major shares in the new Rwanda airport and owns half of Rwandair. They are shareholders in other airports. They sponsor many (US) and other universities, many who have problems now with antisemitism protests. They Sponsor a lot of Mosques world wide. And the list is much longer. They are not as nice as you may think. That would be one of the reasons I would avoid them, not the quality of their Airline.

First time I have commented on a post but the toxicity here is shocking.

It just shows that when a passenger, sorry guest, is sitting in a seat for several hours and may visit the toilet, that its the details and "little things" that matter. Josh commented that the crew did not engage with him upon boarding or serving and the toilet was unclean so this failed Qatar's own high standards and I speculate the crew was asked for an explanation but ultimately dismissed. The old A330 product is simply out of line with today's cabins in Qatar's excellent lineup but Josh committed the cardinal sin of mentioning top management and the A350 surface coating debacle. But clearly the handling of the video linkup with the Qatar Airways VP of Corporate Communication, lack of apology, attempt to get the video deleted and other actions was pretty terrible. We do have other pretty startling examples of how badly Qatar Airways have handled certain other situations also.

Then we must look at how "life saving" it was when Qatar Airways was one of the few airlines to offer a continuous international service during the Covid pandemic, enabling people overseas to get back to home countries once they had secured hotel quarantine places, etc. Also consider the exceptionally high standard of business and first class products of QA and making some of the longest flights in the world. When QA are one of the most awarded airlines of the world for their product and service there must be substance behind their performance.

Where does this leave us? I expect Josh's experience was outside the norm, unfortunate and hopefully not being repeated on flights all over the world today. It might have been a lot better for QA to apologise to Josh and award him some miles or vouchers. Marking him for automatic upgrades to business (where service seems to be exceptionally good) might have been smarter.

Who?

I'm not a big fan of Josh Cahill, but now I have to watch this video.

Josh who? Never saw anything from him. No idea whether he's a credible YTer or not. At any rate, Qatar took a terrible step in banning him from the airline and especially firing the cabin crew on that particular flight. Certainly hope they found other jobs. Qatar should hang their head in shame over that alone. Most businesses with a negative review will take the high road, issue an apology and strive to improve on said issues. Qatar took the low road for sure.

Shows a part of the middle eastern/ Islamic culture that the west finds so offensive. Absolute power from the top down. Management fails to take responsibility and blames and fires workers.
Hateful culture glossed over to take the infidel’s money. Typical cultural example.

Lucky the government didn’t chop their hands off and cut out their tongue.

A lot of ethnocentric based opinions here. They handled it the way middle eastern countries handle things, this shouldn't be s surprise to others.

The fact that I've never had a negative experience on [fill in the blank] or that the experience is out of the norm doesn't negate another individual's experience. I haven't seen the video but from the information in the articles it sounds like the review implied that this wasn't just a bad day on a single day's combination of flight's but that it indicated that the airline was "in decline", which a single bad flight does not, in fact do.

Care should be taken when writing about things that happen in other countries to understand what the consequences are. I noted that he learned of the ban when traveling to Thailand. A review such as this in Thailand can result in crimiinal slander charges! So one has to really take some care to understand the context of what they are doing in the culture that they are potentially offending. American values are just that, American, and they don't follow the person around the world.

Now, as an American myself I do generally support Mr. Cahill's right to say what he wishes about his experience, but he has to understand he's not dealing with inalieable "rights" here and he might also do well to remember that Qatar Airways is a state-owned airline and not a privately held company, too. He may find that he's also been banned from entering Qatar altogether (and I'd proceed with extreme caution if planning to fly to or through the country at all in the future if I were him.)

Another fine piece of journalism from aero explorer. Everything they publish sounds as if it was written by a sixth grader.

Shows the true mentality of Quatar. It's a wonder the crew weren't beheaded.

I don’t find “content creators” to be particularly inspiring. If you come into my house and start filming stuff for internet hits I might be upset. Then again I’m not selling tickets.

Joburg to Doha, economy section full of sub continent citizen passengers. Walking through that section after landing was like walking through a theater after a kiddie matinee, there wasn't one square inch of the floor and on the seats that was devoid of trash, a total pig sty.
I can only imagine what the toilets looked like.

Maybe Sam Chui may do a review on Qatar.

He has every right to post a review, and the airline has every right to ban him.

Qatar will learn their lesson and they're lose revenue over this. It's not in airlines that people really want to fly these days in the Middle East. The recovery will take time "watch"

Unless other significant parties for some reason side with Cahill, this will all blow over in time. They'll just have to ride out the initial wave of negativity.

Personally I despise all "YouTubers"/"Influencers"; get a real job #narcissits.
I'd ban the lot of them.
You may disagree, I'm OK with that.

BRAVO Josh and the other Reviewer's for GREAT Videos ... Interesting to see . Many nasty people comment here ..

Josh who?
I didn’t know YouTubers were “famous”?!…..never heard of him until now.

can we please ban all articles from Aeroexplorer.com? I would rather read articles than be bombarded with ads...

Josh probably never flew any of the local South American airlines. Or have never been at a provincial Russian airport.
On the other hand - not a nice approach of Qatar airways. A giant is a giant to admit mistakes with a smile. They are way higher than many of the airlines for those who can compare.
And old joke of an old woman kicking her husband for screwing her badly over the 50 years together. And BIG kick of lady's arse in return - for knowing the DIFFERENCE)

There is a lot of generalization about people who post (and make their business) on YouTube -- we all (or most of us) have to make a living somehow. Many of you sound like grumpy old men.

Just as in anything in life, there is good information and bad info on content streaming applications. Josh has over 660,000 subscribers -- let alone those who watch and are not subscribed. His reviews on airlines and their customer service are popular for both entertainment and as a value to travelers. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

Regarding his review of his Qatar flight, he has just as much right to review the experience on his flight as you do for writing a review on the coffee pot that you just purchased on Amazon. Would you expect Amazon to ban you from buying anything on their site for a bad coffee pot review -- no. The same goes for airlines. They should take the criticism of their product as good customer input and institute a plan to correct the issues (and say thank you for the input). Watch the video; it isn't like he made up the issues or has a vendetta against the airline.

The phrase "never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel was often used to refer to the media, as newspapers used to buy a lot of ink. This phrase needs to be updated for the 21st century (and for a YouTuber with as many subscribers as an old-time big-city newspaper). Qatar can't win this argument or deal with people reviewing their product by acting like a bully. It just doesn't work in 2023 (no matter what you think about YouTube or Josh)

I promise absolutely nobody is boycotting Qatar over this...

I’ve flown on Qatar a number of times. The best airline in the world. YouTubers , don’t think much of them, experience something once and make judgments. Get a real job. I’m glad Qatar banned whoever this person says he is .
YouTubers get real jobs.

Tempest in the Teapot.....

I have watched a number of Josh Cahill reviews and I think he is an objective reviewer who does not take any freebees offered to other reviewers. Remember his review is a snapshot of one flight and earlier reviews may have been more positive. Qatar is supposed to be a 5 star Skytrax airline(whatever that means) and maybe a warning shot over the bow will encourage the leadership to make changes that are positive for the airline without banning a reviewer.

Personally I would rather have a really safe airline with excellent crews and maintenance folks than an airline rated on cabin amenities.

I'm sure there are those that would of been happy to see him filming and talking vlogging tossed off the flight. No problem with that now.

Another smelly Mackerel flopping around the flight deck

Another smelly mackerel flopping around on the flight deck

Does this guy expect Qatar to like him when he insults them and drags them through the mud. However Qatar should have just ignored him for the attention seeking nobody he is.

What is "Josh Cahill"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI-qYSDgg38&ab_channel=JoshCahill

Well, he had the right to “whine”(as do most “you tubers) about Qatar, and Qatar, held owned by private investors, had the right to ban him. And by the way, I have no idea who that guy is.🤣

Just another example of "wokeness"... if you disagree or go against them in any way, they will shut you down, purge, eliminate, imprison or have you killed for your "truth"!

Obese people are not always making poor choices. They have medical problems, among other issues. I hope they are more understanding than Cahill is!