Qatar Airways staff travel and the Doha hub for crew: how the network makes a day off into a trip, the ID tickets and the destinations crew actually use

Two years at Qatar, from Adelaide, and the staff travel threads on here are Emirates and Delta. Qatar's is different because the Doha hub connects everywhere and the crew use it in a specific way. Here is how.

The tickets

ID90 style standby on the Qatar network from early in the contract, confirmed discounted tickets after a period, a set of tickets for family, and interline agreements with the partner airlines (the oneworld ones particularly) at discounted standby fares. The tax is the main cost on most routes; the fare component is small.

The hub effect

Doha is connected to about 170 destinations, most of them daily. A two day off block from Doha is a night in almost any city in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia or Southeast Asia. A three day block is Australia or East Asia. The crew who use the staff travel well have a list of two day cities and a list of three day cities and they check the loads the day the roster comes out.

The destinations crew actually use

The Australians go home (Adelaide via Melbourne, Perth direct, Sydney) on the long blocks. The Europeans do the short blocks to home. The Asian crew do the same. And everyone does the leisure ones: Zanzibar and the Maldives (short flights, cheap on staff travel, the beach), Istanbul and Athens for a European weekend, Colombo and Kathmandu for the crew who like walking, Muscat for the day trip.

The loads

Standby means you fly if there is a seat and the Doha hub flights are full in the peaks: the Eid weeks, the European summer, the December holidays. The experienced crew fly against the traffic (into Europe when the Europeans are flying out) and on the midweek days. The crew who try Athens on a Friday in August in standby learn about the loads.

The rules the crew follow

Never standby into a duty: the last flight before a duty is a confirmed ticket or a night at home. Keep the passport and the visas ready for the destinations that need them (the Australians need nothing for Europe, the Indians and the Filipinos need visas and the crew plan around it). Have the backup flight listed. And tell the roster team when you leave the country on a day off, because a call out on standby days while you are in Zanzibar is a problem.

The family tickets

A set of confirmed discounted tickets each year for parents and partners, which is how the Adelaide family has seen Doha twice. The confirmed tickets are the ones to use for the family; standby is for crew who can handle a night in a terminal.

The honest value

For an Australian in Doha, the staff travel is the difference between seeing family twice a year and once. For the leisure use, it is the reason a two day block feels like a holiday. The crew who never use it are the ones who count the days to leave. The ones who use it are the ones who stay.