Compensation Clinic: Qatar Airways Flight Delay Of More Than 8 Hours Due To “Operational Reasons”

This week the Compensation Clinic-case comes from a Qatar Airways flight delay on a trip from Hong Kong to Paris that got delayed in Doha by more than eight hours due to “operational reasons”.

Remember that you can always email us, send a message via Facebook or use Twitter and include photos too. We’ll try to cover a Compensation Clinic case here once a week, every Sunday.

You can access Qatar Airways here:

Here’s the Facebook message that the reader sent us:

Few days ago, I took a Qatar flight from HKG to CDG. During transit at Qatar, our flight delayed for more than 8 hours due to operational reasons. As I tried to contact their tell-us team, they rejected any compensation even I showed them their own website related compensation information.

Here’s the email that the reader had sent to Qatar:

And here’s reply from Qatar Airways:

We replied to the reader that Qatar Airways is certainly not known for exceptional customer service when things go wrong (none of the ME3 is). The EC 261/2004 compensation scheme doesn’t apply here because the trips is TO EU and not FROM the EU and Qatar obviously is not Community Carrier.

To out surprise Qatar Airways had offered reader some compensation after all:

Conclusion

Not sure how easy these EDMs are to use? You probably need to call the reservation in or to use an airport or city ticket office that would be huge  PITA and waste of time.

Better than nothing if you plan to use Qatar Airways, however, before they expire.