Qatar (Worst) Airline of the Year 2022

If I could give zero stars, I would. This has been such a long saga of disappointments since booking our Honeymoon trip with them, that I almost don't know where to begin but I am going to try keep this to the point. We built our honeymoon around the fact that Qatar had a direct flight from Doha to Santorini. Naturally, when starting your honeymoon - you want to get there as quickly and easily as possible to avoid arriving tired and annoyed after one too many flights and layovers - something we really valued for our Honeymoon as being NB. Qatar decided to cancel this flight altogether (not on that day or at that time- but altogether) and figured that the appropriate change would be to offer us replacement flights via Athens (so an extra flight) with an additional layover of 8 hours, when there were other options of 2hrs or less in terms of a layover available on their website. After more than a month of hours on chats/ on hold etc repeating myself to 5 different people, I eventually accepted a 4 hour layover in Athens and the additional flight to save my sanity... Nutshell- Qatar cancelled our perfect "direct" flight from Doha to Santorini, and replaced it with a layover flight - the longest possible one available on their website... rather than making the effort to replace it with the best possible flight considering the additional time and inconvenience this was already putting on us... and only after hours and hours of more stress and inconvenience trying to make this point to them.

Now, we are trying to change our return leg from Zurich to being from London, and guess what? They want to charge double the cost of a completely new one way flight currently available on their website (R15000 rand) to change the return leg - total proposed cost R24000 per person. Breakdown below: R25870 - R9150 (already paid) = 16720 ZAR fares (MORE THAN A WHOLE NEW FLIGHT ON THEIR WEBSITE EVEN AFTER THE DEDUCTION OF THE FEE ALREADY PAID) R11710 - R4764.40 = R6945.60 taxes (additional) R350 zar - service fee(non-refundable)

No matter how many times (and more than an hour later on chat waiting) I tried to ask why to the chat agent - I was basically told it just is what it is... Also, because Qatar changed our itinerary due to no fault of ours - we are unable to try to make the change ourselves online and I have to sit through a painful online chat process (don't even bother with the call centre- you might ****** someone through the phone) in order to see or do anything in terms of changes to the booking. When I asked what we would get in terms of refund if we cancelled the return part of our flight - the chat agent said that until we take the first leg, we can't do that - and they had no idea what we should expect back until the time we cancel - not even the tiniest indication.

Bottom line - I WILL NEVER EVER BOOK ANOTHER ITINERARY WITH QATAR AGAIN - EVEN IF SOMEONE ELSE PAYS FOR IT! And, I am desperately hoping our in-flight experience is as "world-class" as Qatar is meant to be otherwise the beautiful beginning to our Honeymoon we hoped for will be truly stuffed.

P.s. Do yourself a favour - search on their website for a contact email address, a way to submit a complaint, or even literally search "complain" on their website - they don't make it easy for you!