Qatar Airways has reportedly banned a YouTuber after he posted a negative review of a flight, and also fired the crew.
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.
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 cancelled, 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
