Crewmembers accuse Qatar Airways of labor exploitation and unsafe practices

Qatar Airways pilots claim that the state-owned airline “does not account for their working hours and ignores” complaints of fatigue.

Just a few months before Qatar hosts its first World Cup, and expecting the Gulf country’s flag carrier to serve as transportation for many of the teams and fans who will arrive there, pilots are raising concerns about the risks that flights – some lasting more than 18 hours – could create.

Flying more with less personnel

Pilots say the flights “are operated by understaffed and exhausted crews,” citing that the pressure has only “gotten worse” with the pandemic.

Erik, a first officer – who used a pseudonym to avoid retaliation – mentioned to Reuters that “I fell asleep during descent with 400 passengers on board” after a flight of more than 20 hours. The plane landed without incident in Doha, the Qatari airline’s home base.

“There’s nothing you can do about it. Your body is screaming for you to rest. You feel pain inside your chest and you are unable to keep your eyes open,” the crewman added. “We are overworked and fatigued, but I never filed a report so as not to put myself in the spotlight and suffer reprisals.”

On the other hand, In 2020, Qatar Airways laid off about 20% of its workforce. In 2021 it cut another 27%. While the airline reduced its destination list to 33 cities in 2020, it increased it again to more than 140 in 2021. Pilots said that to manage those new flights with a smaller staff the airline was underestimating work hours.

Six other pilots backed up the first officer’s claims, adding that the airline’s work hours were leading to burnout and that managers were refusing to give them sufficient rest. Many did not even file fatigue reports for fear of additional scrutiny from an airline that showed little regard for firing employees during the pandemic. Others said their reports were “simply ignored,” or that despite receiving rest, it was not commensurate with the time worked.

Time does not pass in the same way for everyone

Crews on long-haul flights usually consist of two main pilots and one or more “reserve” pilots, who relieve them during different phases of the flight. Generally, regulators count the flight hours of these reserve pilots in the same way as they do for active pilots. For example, if the flight lasts fourteen hours, all pilots will count fourteen hours of flight time for the purpose of receiving the appropriate rest.

In Qatar, things are done differently: the airline’s operating manual states that, for the purpose of counting rest hours, “inactive” hours during the flight do not count as duty time.

“They count hours in a different way. When I was the ‘third pilot’ my role was to check on the pilots who were flying, so I was just as active as they were and functioning at 100%,” Erik explains. However, that time was not counted as duty time. “As a result, out of a one hour and 33-minute flight, they only counted three minutes to my flight limit.”

Fatigue is a relatively normal occurrence among commercial pilots. In order to prevent it from impacting operational safety, companies often implement fatigue risk management (FRM) systems to ensure adequate rest between flights.

At the Middle Eastern company, this seems a non-issue. “Two colleagues totaled, just in the first two weeks of January, 115 hours of duty. The limit according to the airline handbook is 100 hours every 28 days.”

It’s not just a problem at Qatar

A 2018 study found that more than two-thirds of Gulf-based airline pilots were “severely fatigued.” Lead researcher Tareq Aljurf noted that severely fatigued pilots “were more likely to suffer from depression.”

“Clearly this is a huge safety issue, both for crews and passengers,” said Isobel Archer of the Business and Human Rights Resource Center.