Maybe I’m the only one who finds this interesting, but we’ve finally heard from Qatar Airways’ new CEO, roughly six months into his tenure!
Continue reading: Fascinating: Richard Quest Interviews Qatar Airways’ Mysterious New CEO
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Oh, this is sponsored content, not journalism. Real questions would be:
Q1: How screwed would you be if Qatar's gas-backed sovereign wealth ever stopped underwriting the airline? (Answer: Hella screwed.)
Q2: Can you please stop pulling the last-minute aircraft swap? Or, at least, don't market and sell long-haul Q-Suite, then deliver a lame, zero-privacy 2-2-2 cabin. K, thanx, bye.
not to be that guy but can we expect the four seasons tented camp review soon? has been a few weeks. really looking forward to that one
At the end of the day, while interesting on a certain level, who cares? As long as they have the comfortable seats and offer good fares to India/ southeast Asia/ Australia, etc, the masses will continue to swarm. Vast majority of passengers couldnt care less who the CEO is or what the intrigue is behind the multiple regime changes of the past few years.
“I had almost wondered if his English was just so bad that he didn’t want to do interviews in English, but that’s clearly not the case”
Er, thats what tranaslators are for…
@ Harold -- Your ears must be ringing, because I've spent most of the morning working on it, and am just proofreading. It'll be up today. Sorry, the past week has been crazy, and I've been sick, so it took way too long to get to this.
@ Aaron -- Sure, but I could also see how that might make someone more hesitant to do interviews, given how widely English is spoken by executives of major international airlines.
@ Jason -- Fair, a lot of the stuff that I cover isn't intended to be interesting to the average person. I'm a hardcore avgeek, and I find these aspects of the industry to be very interesting.
I love Questy. I still remember your inaugural A350 flight with CNNs Questy, Sam Chui, and Al-Baker himself. I even remember down to the shocked look of one of the cabin crew when they asked him to be seated because of turbulence and simply brushed it off by saying, "It's okay, I'm crew" or something to that extent!
The impression I got when I watched this yesterday was that he seems out of his depth and is pretty much a figurehead. He will have been educated privately in England, so language was never going to be an issue.
...and when the interview was over, Quest smoked some Tina and ran around the beaches of Rio with a rope around his genitals and a sex toy in his boot.
Not only cares… sounds like Willy is downright jealous.
“Oh! If only I had genitals of my own upon which to tie things around!”
If it’s an absolute requirement that the CEO be a Qatari national, then the honest answer to “why the slim qualifications for ceo?” like is “Yes, they’re slim, but they’re still among the best out of a very limited pool of Qataris, especially when Al-Baker is out of the running!”
Smart move from QA to hire him, by the end of the interview I couldn’t remember a thing he said, next time I’ll listen with my eyes closed!
Richard "The Dick" Quest sounds more like a cartoon character name in a early to mid 1990 (there's that number, hmmmm? 1990!) children's action TV show. Surely that is a "Phony Name"!
Those questions were very tough to be honest, Kudos to Quest for asking them. Two things, he answered the questions as well as he could given the circumstances of trying to be as professional as possible (respectful to his principals) and still try and ANSWER the question, which is a difficult thing to do, especially when you don't want to say the "wrong" thing and I think its clear that he's a bit out of his depth, but he seems like he will learn very quickly, he has a strong team behind him. QR isn't a one-man show. I wish him the very best of luck!
4 CEO's in 30 years. The 1st Sheik Hamad, a good guy, but always gets overlooked.
Quest asking specific, clearly worded questions and not letting generic "PR" answers derail him. Pity more journos don't interview like that.