Time for some discipline

Time for some discipline

A Qatari woman loses her head over a seat

November 30, 2009 12:24 by kippreport

This morning, while Kipp was boarding a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dubai, a Qatari woman kicked up an all-mighty fuss over her seat. In all fairness, someone was sitting in her place, but that someone was kicked off another seat because a member of her entourage had taken it.

Kipp had already flown almost eight hours from Singapore to Doha, so we were too tired to concentrate on the commotion. Until, that is, the woman declared in Arabic that even though a perfectly good seat was available close by, she won’t allow a foreigner to take her place, and said: “This plane is not leaving until he gets off my seat.”

The cabin crew pleaded with her, but she insisted, and repeated that she wouldn’t move for a foreigner.

Why wasn’t the woman escorted off the plane? Not only was she causing a commotion, she was also disrespecting other passengers and the cabin crew.

The irony is that after the foreigner moved, she didn’t take her seat. Instead, she sat close to her family in the back, in what Kipp can only assume is someone else’s place.

Tags: commotion, plane, Qatar airways, seat

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7 Comments

LALALA on November 30, 2009 1:04 pm

what she did is normal anyone else would’ve done the same thing! exept the part where she was disrespectful :p
John on December 1, 2009 6:55 am

lalala, you have to be kidding. This woman is off her trolley! In what world is that “normal” behaviour??? I am amazed she wasn’t escorted off the plane by security.
Andrew on December 1, 2009 7:43 am

John, err, it’s normal in this ‘world’.
Dismanirie on December 1, 2009 8:08 am

If someone was sitting in her allocated seat, the cabin crew should have moved that person to the seat nearby which they offered the lady. That would have pre-empted the histrionics.

Pleading with a person who is behaving irrationally only gives them the advantage. Taking direct action is what is required.

Qatar Airways is typically not the smartest at seat allocations in the first place, regularly splitting up people who check in together or have the same family names. Better training would be the answer.
P DIDDY on December 1, 2009 8:10 am

typical! all too common and predictable! most of us “foreigners” have learnt to live with it rather than mess up a perfectly normal day bec of their childish behaviour.
Peace all!
F on December 1, 2009 10:28 am

In response to the comments indicating that this is typical here, I must say that it happens everywhere. I was in Spain last month, while travelling on a superfast train in first class, a local couple who were in my reserved seat insisted that I had made a mistake reading the ticket printed in spanish, and that the number printed on my ticket was in the next compartment. Thankfully an englishwoman who spoke spanish came to my rescue and insisted that they give me my seat, but I had to stand for part of the trip till the ticket inspector forced them out after the engliishwomans complaint.
Kevin on December 1, 2009 3:53 pm

This is plain simple bafoonery. First the airline failed to do the job right, second the woman is definitely amongst the highly insecure lot and you see many of them behaving that way thinking they look superior forgetting how much more dumb they come accross. I condemn any foolish behaviour from any ethinic background in any country as after all we all know its wrong but still some struggle to come to terms within their complexities.