Doha: worst airport ever

Short Version:

Doha is probably the worst airport ever. I flew Qatar Airways (a very fine airline once you are inside the plane) toand from Kathmandu and had a 5-6 hour layover each way in Doha. It’s impossibly overcrowded, so couple the delirium of changing time zones, sleepiness, slight apprehension of going to Nepal for the first time and inability to find a place to sit/rest, multiply by 5 hours, and you get the idea.

Longer Version:

For those that don’t know, Doha is in Qatar, on the Arabian Peninsula. I landed and took off in the dark, so I can’t say much about the scenery. At the risk of being close-minded, I’d venture to say that they have a lot of sand and oil pumps.

The airline is pretty cool – the staff is multi-ethnic, they hire from all the countries they fly to, and they boast that they have 55 ethnicities working for them. That translates into a lot of people from South East Asia and, surprisingly, a clearly Russian attendant that I spotted in Doha. How she ended up there, no idea (actually, I have a couple. Probably by plane).

Back to the gripes about the airport – it’s just way too small to support the amount of traffic going through it. First, when you get off the airplane, you stand in a long 30-minute line to go through the security to get into the airport. That was my first sighting of men wearing traditional Arab dress. Pretty cool, and a little surreal.

Once you are past the security check, you have 3 options: go into the giant “duty free” shopping area that takes up most of the airport building, or walk around aimlessly in circles trying to find a place to sit. Alternatively, you can go upstairs, show your transit ticket to the next place, get a meal voucher and wait in line for a fairly mediocre “dinner” in a crowded fast-food type place, followed by jostling for a place to sit in their overcrowded café. And that’s the only dining option.

Once you are done with this so-called dinner, you go back to option #2: cruise the tiny waiting area trying to find a seat. At this point you are fighting against an army of people from the Asian continent who’ve been dealing with overcrowding and lack of personal space their entire life, so you stand no chance. If you try to be clever and pay your way into a first-class lounge (hey, it’s only $25!) you’d be disappointed. Apparently, “paid peasant access” is only available after 11:30pm – which in my case translated into 2 hours of waiting to get in. So no such luck. Only other option is to try and find a place to sit on the floor, as far away from the not-so-hermetically sealed smoking lounge as possible, and read a book.

So what’s the point of this rant? Ah yes, Doha (and Qatar airways) should triple the size of the airport, and put more chairs in. Another point? Don’t fly through Doha. Or get rip-roaring drunk on the first leg of your flight – I think that’s what the Nepalis coming from Kathmdandu on the way back were trying to accomplish