Just moments before heading out to the gym this evening, I received a frantic message from one of my clients, stating–
Lot of problems in Houston, Qatar says there is no reservation for [name removed] both ways. PLEASE HELP!
With the Lufthansa strike and a problem with El-Al one-way tickets (the subject of a future post), it has already been a stressful couple of days in my world of award travel consulting.
I called the client and was told that while United had said everything was great in Cleveland (checking the bags all the way through to their final destination), Qatar had been unable to locate one of the tickets upon check-in in Houston.
The client had been shuttling back and forth between the United Customer Service desk and Qatar lounge for the last two hours (I wish they had called me immediately!) in a game of badminton, with United saying the ticket was just fine, Qatar saying the opposite, and neither side willing to step up and show some leadership.
Qatar had even pressured my client to buy a new economy class ticket and he was about to hand over his credit card when he decided to reach out to me first.
I called the United electronic support desk immediately where a woman took a look at the ticket and said everything looked fine. Everything looked fine on the United side to me too, but the ticket would not longer pull up on Qatar’s website as it had done when I first issued the ticket in July. It was now less than one hour prior to takeoff, so I had a sinking feeling that something bad had happened to his reservation.
I conferenced in the client, who passed over the phone to a representative in the Qatar lounge. While not rude, she was clearly exasperated and not at all competent. She kept insisting there was no reservation, until the United agent read her the ticket number, which she manually inputted.
Suddenly, the reservation popped up: Qatar had found it. And it was booked in business class! Only there was a problem now–there were no seats left in business class. I could hear the lounge matron trying to bully my client into a coach seat and I let the matron know right away that was unacceptable. I asked to speak to the station manager, but was told she was not available. Of course…
By now, my client was getting ancy (unable to postpone his trip a day) and agreed to the resolution proposed by Qatar–an economy class window with a blocked middle seat.
Here’s what I think happened–Qatar somehow missed the ticket and by the time they found it (how sad that United had to help them locate it), the client’s business class seat had been given away. I am angry tonight–extremely angry.
I do not want to make accusations, but could it be that Qatar pulled an Air China-like stunt and failed to find the reservation because it had actually overbooked the cabin and decided that a ticket issued on partner-United would be the easiest one to “lose”? Qatar found his wife’s reservation without issue, also issued on United at the same time as his, so I question that hypothesis, though I cannot rule it out.
If Qatar had cancelled the ticket, would not UA’s system have picked that up? Or could it be that United’s SHARES system is so bad that it doesn’t know when a partner cancels a flight? Even US Airways is not that bad. But I must question that hypothesis as well. Again, upon check-in in Cleveland the clients were told that everything was fine. Their reservations showed up fine on united.com and even Qatar’s website, at least the day after the tickets were issued.
I am bummed tonight because I failed–even if through no fault of my own. I have other clients booked on Qatar and now I am going to have to monitor their itineraries just to make sure they remain in good order. That should not be necessary.
Have any of you had trouble with your Qatar tickets? If you have an upcoming trip, consider yourself warned. And don’t forget the Qatar-United partnership ends next week (14 September). If you want to give Qatar a try, book now–and be careful.
Wow….that’s terrible
Flew them in August in J IAD-DOH-BKK in a full cabin booked w/ UA miles and didn’t have any issues
Feel bad for the client. Is DOH their final destination?
@Jimgotkp: No, thankfully Qatar was able to confirm his onward flight in business class.
Thank you for raising this issue. We have forwarded it to our partnerships team in the hopes that they can retrace what the issue was in your case. This should not be repeated, as our aim is to make travel hassle and stress-free. We hope you’ll be flying with us again. We’ll do all we can to improve and learn from this case you’ve raised.
All the best.
Michael @ The Qatar Airways Community
@Michael: Many thanks for your response. Feel free to e-mail me or contact me via Twitter for more information, if needed.
Kindly email me with the passenger name, PNR, and flight details. Our team is planning to investigate.
Rgds. Michael
This happened to me in March. United twice issued tickets, but Qatar had no record of it. The third time finally worked, but we had to delay our trip by 5 days until we finally got ticketed and were able to travel.
This is the flag carrier of the country FIFA awarded a World Cup to? Wow.
I had a similar issue with a United award ticket and a Turkish air reservation. My flight was delayed into Istanbul due to weather in DC and the United team rebooked me onto a later flight and confirmed it. In Germany where I was connecting to Istanbul Lufthansa printed out the new flight reservations to help me in Istanbul. When I got to Istanbul Turkish Air refused to honor the revised ticket issued by United saying that I missed the earlier flight and that was that. United kept saying the ticket looked ok, but they couldn’t convince TK of that. Ultimatley I had to buy a new ticket in coach depsite being booked in business and had a long layover as the flight I had been rebooked on left while I was arguing with TK and UA. Frustrating and not sure who to blame for that either.
Hi Matt,
I need your suggestion regarding my upcoming award trip on United.
My itinerary is ORD-KHI departing 10/25 and return on 11/25. I want to fly business class on Qatar so it has to be confirmed by 09/13 (giving 24 hours window for Qatar to confirm). Currently the only availability on Business is via MUC. But the aircraft from ORD-MUC is a United 777-200 (which I dont want to fly). I was wondering if I can finalize some city in Europe from where I can fly Qatar on Business meanwhile wait for seats to open up for the Trans-atlantic portion post 09/14… The other problem I am having is that most of the flights being operated by Qatar from Europe are on A-320 and A-330 aircrafts that do not offer 180 Lie-flat seats so would prefer atleast a lie-flat seat for the transatlantic portion…I am open to departure from other cities on the outbound (IAH,DTW,EWR,IAD,PHL,CLT)…… Any suggestions?
Folks. Let’s not conflate two separate issues. The situation described here by Matt has nothing to do with the far more common issue many are reporting with spect to UA award reservations.
The principal and far more prevalent problem is that Shares does not communicate ticket numbers to partners sometimes even though the itinerary is technically ticketed and ticket numbers sent to the customer. When partners eventually see no ticket numbers after a defined time period, they will simply cancel their segments of a given itinerary.
I have had this happen to me earlier this year and it is no fun because in almost all cases, travelers won’t find out about the issue until they try to check in, or unless they check their reservation…by which time it is typically too late to get the same seats back.
Therefore, if you make award reservations through UA, you MUST call the partners on whom legs are booked as part of an itinerary and verify that they have received ticket numbers. This is imperative.
Recently, I have however experienced that even properly ticketed partner segments have been cancelled. While I have no idea why, I can only say that periodic checking of itineraries is imperative.
That said, the issue described here seems like an issue with QR since they were able to pull up the ticket eventually.
I was planning on booking an award using United miles IAD-DOH-BKK on QR in business class, but now I am hesitant. I have had similar issues happen before (show up at airport and reservation is “lost”) and it is extremely stressful. Not worth the risk. I think I will book LH/LX and TG instead.
I think if LH/LX/TG has inventory, you are making the right choice.