I doubt that the Qatar issue will be resolved any time in the near future Dave. You'd be advised to look at other options.
Luxor is not the easiest place to reach, if the problem is not resolved by next Tuesday I may try for a re-route to Istanbul, then make my own way down with Egyptair via Cairo. I will wait till Qatar contact me, it is their problem and they are the experts at flight routing. The DOH LXR route is only being cancelled one day forward at the moment.
Nice to see another welshman here haha. I am not so bothered about the bit of travel time here in the UK, depending on where I fly from. I just dislike the stopovers in other countries unless I actually intend to have a little gander. I think Heathrow is probably my best bet from what you and others have said. Yeah, I wouldn't particularly look forward to the national express trip either haha, but at least it saves you some money. I'll just look into what is best for me at the time in terms of price and timings.
A thousand curses on Qatar Airways. During earlier phone calls to both their Doha and London offices I was told to wait till 24 hours before my departure, and I would be re-routed. I was assured that everything would be OK, they could not do anything earlier due to the regional airline re-routing agreements, or some similar twaddle. When I called today they said there was nothing they could do, they even refused to re-route me from Doha to Istanbul instead of Luxor, even though the Qatar website clearly showed availability on the route, availability that connected with my original KUL-DOH flight. Regardless, I managed to book alternate flights myself, leave tomorrow, Turkish Airlines to CAI via IST, three hours connection time in Cairo before my Egyptair flight to Luxor, and I should be in my hotel three hours after I originally intended.
Well, I won't ever be flying Qatar given that info, at least KLM got me home when the Iceland volcano went up in 2010
My past few flights have been jinxed. Flying to Mexico in March, my Leeds to Amsterdam flight was cancelled, I was re-routed via LHR 9 hours later. My next flight, to Istanbul, my luggage arrived almost 20 hours after me due to a tight connection in AMS. The next flight to Kuala Lumpur where I am now, the Leeds to Amsterdam flight was delayed, I missed the connection and flew on the next KLM flight 15 hours later. On all of these occasions the airline, KLM, handled the situation well, clear communication and a nice hotel in Amsterdam for the missed connection. I guess that clear communications is the missing factor with this Qatar debacle. Since it started the only "communication" from Qatar Airways has been an e-mail entitled "Less than 48 hours left. Make it a holiday to remember". It was from their marketing department informing that their flight sale was about to end, I received it 48 hours before my scheduled flight. No other e-mails, texts, or anything. You couldn't make that s**t up.
I did one round trip with Qatar - between Gatwick and Cebu - in 2006 and vowed never again would I step aboard one of their aircraft, even if someone else was paying (which on this occasion they were). And that was business class.
In a word Doha airport. On the outward and return flights we arrived there at night and on both occasions we were greeted by pouring rain, fairly light outbound but heavy on the return sector. There are no airbridges at Doha so one has to climb up and down steps: these were not covered against the elements nor were any umbrellas available - they had run out. Finally they parked the shuttle buses beyond the wing tips, about 100 metres from the bottom of the steps - and who thought that all the passengers from a full A330 would fit on just two buses, one of which was for crew and business class?! Result: everyone got thoroughly soaked and a day after I returned home, I was rushed to hospital and spent 3 days over Christmas in intensive care with pneumonia and complications; that's why! Qatar isn't as good as KLM even if its crews and aircraft are younger.
That's some pretty long runways they have there, two in the top twenty in the world, I take it that it was Doha International rather than Hamad International, the latter has air bridges. Doha International looks like the old apron area at Schiphol that they used for a long time for most of the City Hopper flights, but you never had to walk too far at Schiphol.
Yes it was Doha International, it appears to be used only by Qatar Airways. I'm not too worried about runway length - I've flown in and out of Sint Maarten and Saint Barthelemy! And yes, you right, that City Hopper apron is quite similar to that at Doha - except the buses park closer to the aircraft steps and there's often more than one bus per plane.
I must admit I have only been through Doha 4 times but the stairs were covered. Not that I needed it as it was a humid night, no rain. It was a hassle jumping on the bus, the heat was uncomfortable until everyone boarded and closed the doors. One disembarkation took ages to get to the airport. Last time I went they had started work on the airport in readiness for the World Cup 2022. I actually preferred the flight experience itself with Qatar over KLM.
The new Doha (Hamad) Airport only opened three years ago. The one time I used it was last year, and it seemed modern, spacious, and quite pleasant for a flight connection.
For my flights over the past day: There was an airbridge for the Boeing 777 when departing Kuala Lumpur on Turkish airlines, but steps and shuttle buses when ariving in Istanbul. There were steps and shuttle buses for the Turkish Airlines Airbus A321 both when leaving Istanbul and arriving in Cairo. Likewise, steps and shuttle buses for the Egyptair Embraer ERJ170 when departing Cairo and arriving in Luxor. Fortunately no rain.
Ah that explains it, as I no longer have any miles to protect with KLM I will be basically going with the best deal or best schedule in future and Qatar was a possibility before the political problems with their neighbours started.
