No booking to Japan online with Qatar Airways anymore

26 Aug, 2008  Random

Well here’s a weird one. I was scouring the Qatar Airways website and just wanted to see how much it would cost to go from Doha to Tokyo.

At the moment Doha goes to Tokyo via Osaka.

I noticed that Tokyo wasn’t on the list. First I thought it was my browser issue. I refreshed. Nope no Tokyo.

So I decided to give Qatar Airways a call. I asked if they stopped traveling to Tokyo and he said, no we didn’t cancel it, we still do. I explained that it wasn’t on the website and he tried to put me through to someone who could help but the line got disconnected.

I tried calling reservations again (I go through the Arabic section) and nobody was answering. I thought I’d test the waters so I hung up, called again and this time tried to go through the English section. I got an answer. However the woman, who sounded African sounded as if she wanted to committ suicide. She was depressing. She did give me the number to the internet division.

4203015 if someone wants it.

A philipino woman answered and SHE is what I expected from a 5 star airline. Amazingly friendly, helpfull and she got me the answer fast.

She explained that you can no longer book a trip to Tokyo through the website because they’re undergoing some major changes within the next few months and that it was only implemented yesterday.

I thanked her, she offered any assistance and that was that.

I went to the website again to check if Osaka was on the list but it wasn’t. It seems that you can’t book any trips between Japan online and have to do it through a Qatar Airways office. (Did you know the 5% charge is only in Qatar by the way?)

Anyway, just thought I’d help out.

On a side note, it’s kind of funny seeing that it was only in Sept 2007 that QR went through HEAVY promotion of the airline in Japan and trained some new Japanese staff. See article here

Update: 6/9/2008

Tokyo’s back on the website again, HOWEVER you always get the ‘no reservation available’ message no matter what dates you choose. Sneaky sneaky.

Freedom of Expression

    Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which the Qatari Government is a signatory of states: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any medias and regardless of any frontiers.

    The Emiri Decision Number 86 of the year 2007 on the establishment of the Doha Free Information Centre marked yet another step towards establishing a State of rights and freedom of speech. The decision stipulated that the Centre be a non-profit organization, headquartered in Doha City, and have the authority to establish other affiliated centres inside and outside Qatar. It is worth mentioning that His Highness the Emir issued a decision in 1998 annulling the ministry of information, giving birth to a new era of freedom of speech where censorship was removed from local media.