Qatar Airways Sticks It To Qantas Employees, And That's Fair Enough

The airline I work for also has a J ID90 agreement with them. Best way to cross the world. Keep in mind tho that flying standby isn't always smooth and easy and you could be 13h in economy as well.

If ID90 standby priority is below mine, I don't care. But if a Qantas employee paying 10% gets the seat I'm waitlisted for, or gets confirmed travel while I can't find an award seat, I call foul. Toss 'em.

It's space-available. You really think Qatar was allowing airline employees to purchase confirmed business class for 90% off?

When I was at NW, we could get ID90 business class tickets on Lufthansa. The merger with DL eliminated that perk. I don't believe DL employees get ID90 premium class tickets on any carrier, not even the Skyteam partners.

No different than a few years ago, United on one day simultaneously ended all employee ID-travel and local pass agreements systemwide with Frontier and Spirit "for competitive reasons."

Qatar and Emirates have been traditionally very generous with ID travel. I've gotten ID00 positive space in J from both of them on multiple occasions.

QR is incredibly petty. And I love it.

While they're at it, Qatar should send every Australian through secondary inspection and throw a heavy fine for anyone who failed to declare a chocolate bar.

Take a snark pill. when they get a required boarding pass, they're "confirmed". sometimes this happens when someone would like to book an award seat, but can't, because none was offered.

This is just a change to their reciprocal zed agreement… as such QR employees have also now lost that benefit on Qantas. As an airline employee our zed agreements and business class eligibility (Zeds replaced ID90s decades ago btw) within those agreements are constantly being added, retracted, renegotiated, tweaked….this is a non story. At my airline we’ve added 2 J class agreements this year and lost 1…so what, not a concern for the travel blogosphere.

Nope all confirmed passengers waitlisted for an upgrade are always upgraded prior to any staff member, unless said staff member is on a DH or Duty travel and are contractually entitled to a J class seat.

I just read an article surmising that Australia was not allowing the expansion bc Qatar violated Australian nationals by requiring them to submit to an OB-GYN exam when a baby was found in a lav. I guess you can call that protectionist? But the right kind of protectionist, like protecting your citizens rights to bodily autonomy.

The Guardian- "Australian women sue Qatar Airways over forced examinations at Doha airport. Five Australian women are suing Qatar Airways in the New South Wales supreme court over a 2020 incident in which they were forcibly removed from aeroplanes at gunpoint in Doha, and some intimately examined without explanation or their consent." Oct 21, 2022

The agreement for J class is not « historic » as it was signed only few months ago, and it also means QR employee will lost the benefit with QF, because it’s reciprocal. Better check your sources please.

I think it’s important to note that ID90 discounts are 90% off the FULL J or Y base fare, not the discounted fare buckets most folks purchase. Also the discount is only off the base fare, not all the taxes and fees. So while an ID90 ticket can be a great value, they are by no means “cheap” and could still easily run $2,000 for round trip long haul flights.

So the fact that Qatar could fly to other cities in Australia now,but want to select the main ones for more flights, is constantly overlooked. Also, another carrier still supporting Russia by flying there frequently. The fact that Qantas lobby hard is no different to any other carrier where their turf is being threatened. But punish QF staff anyway...just in case!

Hey just a quick question, was it a “real” old school ID 90 agreement (I haven’t seen one of those for 15+yrs)…or was it just a normal J class zed agreement like my carrier has with QR?

Agreed. Many years ago, when I flew for Pan Am, there were carriers that we knew not to ask for " ID90" or Pass Rides and they knew not to ask us. The world was smaller and simpler then, but yes this was a HUGE perk and quite honestly I never sat in Y on PA nor any other pass riding airline.

Old school ID 90 or is it a Zed?

I am in Australia now and it is blatantly obvious that this episode, despicable as it is, is clearly being used to prevent QR from being a competition to QF.

For me until the Australian women, strip searched and vaginally examined whilst flying Qatar and in transit at Doha are adequately compensated, Australia owes Qatar nothing!
They currently have a civil case mounted, and no new rights should be granted until that is settled.
Also Qatar like Emirates continues to fly to Russia.

There are no so called ID90 or ID50 (confirmed bookings) out there anymore.

Only ZED tickets with 3 different (pay) - zones

ID doesn’t mean “Industrial Discount” - it means “Industry Discount” - btw.

I seem to recall (back in early ‘90s when I was an airline employee) that 90s were SA and 50s we PS. Not that you’d want to spend 50% of Full Y anyway.

Ben, this is a fascinating topic. Can you write more about these inter-airline travel perks? I've never heard of ID90 or any of the other things people in this thread are saying. I'm not in the airline industry, and would love to know more!

And they're standby, with a low priority. All rev passengers (including upgrades through whatever means) > the airline's own employee on standby > ID90.

Given current loads, it's not at all easy to get on with ID90 in a premium cabin. The vast majority of regular people would not find it useful even if they had access.

Whoa Paul! The incident you refer to (over 2 years ago) was instigated by the Qatari airport authorities, not the airline! Get it; NOT THE AIRLINE!
While the incident was outrageous and disproportionally excessive by any (even the US TSA) standard, it was not the fault of Qatar Airlines.
The not very bright current Australian Transport Minister has grudgingly admitted under intense parliamentary questioning that this incident was the biggest reason for her refusing Qatar rights for extra flights.
She had also been leant on by other senior government people (the PM was mentioned) who are super-cozy with Qantas and the toads who run it.
Waiting for news of a referral of this hapless minister to the newly minted Federal Corruption Commission.

Yeah good on Qatar stick it to Qantas!

Indeed Qatar want to fly into cities with enough demand to sustain the flights. I'm not sure what's unique about that. They're already using half their a380 fleet to service Australia because of these draconian laws, and doing ludicrous tag flights to Adelaide from Melbourne as well.

The Russia point is of note, but surely you'd be querying Qantas' close relationship with Emirates, who also fly to Russia many times a day. And I don't hear the Aussie Government knocking back Turkish Airlines plans to fly to Australia due to them service Russia also.

I'm sure there's been many under hand deals done here. It'll be interesting just how far reaching it is.

I am Australian and I agree with Qatar what Australia is doing is wrong wrong wrong wake up Qantas you no longer are the best airline

The government owns the airport and the government owns the airline, so they are effectively the same thing. Personally I haven't flown Qatar since that incident, it's simply not worth the (however small) risk, especially if traveling with female family members.

If people choose to look past the moral issues with Qatar that's their choice and if they can fill more flights they should be allowed more flights, the competition means ultimately my SQ flights will get cheaper... (I refuse to fly Qantas after they abandoned Australians overseas during covid - appalling behaviour for the self-proclaimed "national" airline).

QF lobbying to prevent QR competition, thus obliging AU taxpayers to pay more for ex-AU flights, whilst accumulating massive subsidies from said taxpayers is not the ethical form of lobbying. Also, said bailout was needed since airlines (worldwide) preferred to distribute dividends instead of accumulating reserves. But then why if they all know they can get bailout out?

A massive point this post misses is that airline ID agreements are nearly always reciprocal.

Qatar allows QF staff to buy ID90 J and QF allows Qatar staff the same.

So it’s the frontline staff or BOTH carriers that end up losing out.

Petty.

Reciprocal it may be but how much use is a QF discount when they have such limited network? A sum of the discounted amounts from each carrier should give some interesting statistics!

Let’s not forget QF has just been such a bad sport when it comes to alliance partnerships since forever! They can make the EK partnership/JV work but not a QR partnership? Whatever suits!

The other main one is AD - agency discount. Generally speaking, this tends to hover more around the AD50 mark, unless the agency is very heavily contracted to a particular carrier. When an airline outsources something (ground services, sales etc) the staff of the company doing that will generally receive an ID50 or an ID75.

The Qatari police are neither the police, nor the airport; you are confounding two separate things.

In a country like Qatar, do you think the higher-ups wouldn't point fingers and shift all the blame to the lower ones? Can't even take responsibility at the very least? They're all government-owned too!

All of them are still part of or controlled by the government, heavily so.

Sorry - meant to say that Qatar Airways are neither the Qatari police, nor are they Doha Hamad Airport security personnel; you are confounding two entirely separate things.

ID90 agreements are no longer 90% of full Y or J. They are now Zonal Employee Discounts (ZED), and they are standard prices based on both distance and agreement level. Agreements level are Low, Medium or High. Airlines negotiate which cabin the agreement applies to and the Zed level. Some agreements are Zed low for economy but Zed medium for business.

Pretty sure way more QF employees are taking advantage than this over QR employees. Doesn't even help that Qatar has limited seats to AU thanks to Qantas and so Qatar employees couldn't even take advantage of the Qantas network!

Well much like the code shares and the other agreements between airlines for passengers, this is a similar idea for employees. There could be many reasons why two airlines would break or change their agreement terms.