Hello From The Qatar Airways A350 Delivery Ceremony

Have fun Ben. I have been to the Toulouse HQ of Airbus for Saudi Airlines and it is a very cool experience.
Enjoy 🙂

Tell His "Excellency" that Qatar Airways should treat their employees better, particularly female employees! Female employees in particular are treated like His Excellency's dogs. Actually he probably treats his dogs better then them! I'm actually embarrassed I flew Qatar Airways after hearing and reading how they treat their employees. (Although I would fly them again.)

Accepting freebies from an airline.... A quick way to lose credibility.

What's the deal with the "His Excellency?" Is he also secretly the Governor of Pennsylvania and/or a Catholic Bishop?

Ben's having to slum it on economy (albeit with Krug), just wait for the complaints disguised as 'taking one for the team..'

Slum it in! Sorry

Wow, the comments on this blog get more bitter and twisted with every day. Chin up, Ben! Let haters be haters.

Seriously, what Anthony said. I'm surprised people have so much time for hate. Why read (and post on) a blog you dislike?

When was the last time you flew in a middle seat in economy?

@ Tom -- Couldn't tell you!

@ GH -- Not a freebie from an airline. I was invited through a friend on the Airbus side of things, not by Qatar Airways. You're right, going forward I might be totally unfair towards Boeing and give preferential treatment to Airbus.

I've had too many bad experiences QR including a last minute flight cancellation last month where QR obviously didn't think it was important to inform their passengers! There were no announcements, no staff on hand at the gate and the departure screen didn't mention it either. To make matters worse, this followed a 45 minute wait at check-in as staff eventually realised I didn't actually need a Visa for my destination (with no apology and they refused to admit their system was wrong!!!) and I won't even start about trying to get the airport staff to fulfil their CoC of cancelling my ticket (as they insisted I *had* to fly) Eventually, I just gave up dealing with such incompetence and just walked out of the airport. They are now the only airline on my no-fly list!

Knee the slimy git in the knackers for me, would you please?

I hope you got to meet Al Baker, I'm sure your the only journalist there who will squeal like a teenage girl at a hello kitty convention on meeting him 😉

Postulation:

The haters on this blog aren't actually industry enthusiasts. A Google search for some rookie-level travel query saw them stumble upon Ben's blog, whereupon they realized how much their lives sucked. Broadly-speaking, humans fall into two camps when dealing with feelings of personal inadequacy: the jealous-slash-spiteful camp, and the that's-neat-slash-how-do-I-obtain-for-myself camp.

Having just met the owner of an NFL franchise on a commercial flight, I will take this opportunity to assure the haters that the latter option is much healthier.

Peace out girl scouts.