Qatar Airways Bans YouTuber For Negative Review

Qatar Airways has reportedly banned a YouTuber after he posted a negative review of a flight, and also fired the crew. The carrier’s approach here simply defies logic…

Qatar Airways bans Josh Cahill over unfavorable review

Josh Cahill is a popular YouTuber who reviews flights, and on Saturday he published a roughly 20-minute video about how he was “banned and bribed” by Qatar Airways. This followed an August 2023 video review he published, entitled “the shocking decline of Qatar Airways,” about an economy class flight that he took from Colombo to Doha.

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Let me try to summarize what happened as briefly but accurately as possible, according to Josh:

• Days after he published the video review, Qatar Airways reached out to ask him to hop on a call, which he agreed to, and that included the company’s VP of corporate communications
• Once on the call, the Qatar Airways representatives immediately said that whatever is talked about is off the record, which Josh didn’t agree to; he was then asked what his motive was for such a negative review
• They said the video reflects negatively on the airline, and they offered Josh a free flight if he’s willing to delete the video, which he rejected
• They then asked Josh to delete the negative comments on the video from Qatar Airways employees complaining about poor working conditions at the airline, which he also refused to do
• A week later, he received an email informing him that an upcoming booking on Qatar Airways had been canceled, and that the airline can no longer permit additional bookings from him
• The email references articles 8 & 12 of the contract of carriage, which require permission in order to film on an aircraft, though that was never otherwise enforced for him or any other YouTubers publishing positive reviews
• A short time later, Josh received an email from one of the flight attendants who was working his flight, acknowledging that “I know I gave you permission to film the interaction, but I must ask you to remove me from the video,” because “I was pressured to write a statement that I didn’t give you permission to be filmed,” and “if I don’t write it, I will most likely be dismissed”
• Since Josh wasn’t willing to voluntarily take down the video, Qatar Airways took all of these statements from crew and sent them to YouTube, demanding that the video be removed for privacy reasons
• For those with an IP address in Qatar, Josh’s initial flight review has apparently been blocked, so that you can no longer watch it
• While Josh can’t personally vouch for this, he claims that many sources have told him that the entire crew was terminated after the airline wasn’t able to remove the video

You can watch the video for yourself below…

My take on this Qatar Airways situation

It’s kind of unbelievable how much an airline can get in its own way. I mean, my gosh, how much more poorly could Qatar Airways have handled this? The unprofessionalism and short-sightedness here is astounding.

The best thing Qatar Airways could have done is to either issue an apology for the poor experience or to just ignore the video. Frankly, the video wasn’t even that negative, though Josh does tend to have rather dramatic video titles.

All Qatar Airways has done with its response is to draw way more attention to what happened, which seems to be the opposite of what the goal was. I mean, when he rejected the free flight and said he wasn’t willing to speak off the record, didn’t they get a sense that he would make a video about it? And did they think they would look good in it?

And let’s not even talk about the concept of forcing an employee to email Josh to literally admit that they were being told to lie in order to save their jobs. Some people should be fired here for incompetence, but it shouldn’t be the crew of the flight…

I understand in a country like Qatar, it’s easy enough to control the narrative of things, and force people to do what you’d like, if you have enough money or power. However, that approach doesn’t work when you’re trying to run a global airline. And while it’s absolutely within the carrier’s rights to ban passengers for whatever reason, it’s not a great look if you’re trying to make the airline or country have wide appeal.

Now, I think there’s one very important point to acknowledge, and it kind of sheds some light on how this all played out. This happened while Akbar Al Baker was still CEO of Qatar Airways, as he suddenly resigned several weeks ago. He was known for creating a culture of fear, and where so many decisions were driven by what “the chief” wanted, rather than actually using logic.

So it’s easy enough to figure out exactly how this happened. Al Baker was somehow made aware of this video, and told his minions to have the video removed. Then everyone did everything they could to get that result, rather than pointing out to him that this might not be a good idea.

But there’s some good news. Qatar Airways’ new CEO, Badr Mohammed Al Meer, has shared some refreshing new priorities for the airline, including stating that creating “a culture of trust and empowerment will be the building blocks of our shared success.”

So far there’s actually some substance to this, as he has ended the controversial employee curfew that existed for years within weeks of starting his job. Hopefully this is the first of many changes. I think it would be really smart of him to undo this and apologize for the way that Qatar Airways handled this.

Bottom line

Qatar Airways has banned a popular YouTuber after he posted a negative review of a flight back in August. The airline first tried to get him to remove the video by offering him a free flight, then had the crew email him to revoke permission to appear in the video, and then approached YouTube directly.

This happened under the Al Baker “regime,” so here’s to hoping under Qatar Airways’ new CEO, things change a bit…

What do you make of this Qatar Airways and Josh Cahill situation?