Qatar Airlines: 5 Star Tota Ram

One cannot escape the media blitz of millions of dollars on the ads inserted by Qatar Airline as a 5 star airline. But you need to travel only once to find out, how the Tota ram runs its biz.

Way back in 2007, I tried the airline for one of my flights to Europe. After I turned 40, largely I fly only Biz Class, though being an avid global traveler, most of my early life was on the cheapest mode of transport. As much as that when I traveled in Kashmir, it was on the top of a bus from Pehlgam to Gulmarg. 

But as you grow older, the basic comfort level , if affordable, then moves to higher class of travel. Now, having seen so many ads of Qatar, I thought of trying it against Lufthansa and British, which were other options at almost the same price band.

Being night flight, it had all the comforts of a flat bet etc and early morning it reached Qatar. Where you are driven away in a BMW to a lounge  and from there to a connecting flight. So far so good. And then in the flight from Doha to Munich, the real test starts. The hostess, forgets to serve the main course. But that is also not a big deal as I am not a great fan of airline food.

On the return flight, which had a stop over in Doha for around 16 hours, I had requested for a hotel room as the IATA policy of giving a hotel for any stop over more then 8 hrs . And when you fly Biz class, it is all the more an embedded part of the trip. However, having reached Doha, early morning, I was told that I had to stay put on the lounge and no hotel room would be provided. This was shocking, so I fought hard for my right, but the airline turned a deaf air. I asked for a complaint book and lodged the complaint and took the email id of the CEO of the airline and from the lounge send a mail to him.  But I was not alone in this mistreatment. Then came another flight somewhere out of Africa and there was a passenger, whose connecting flight was on the 3rd day and he was asked to be parked in the lounge. Yet another flight and similar issues with all the biz class passengers, who had flights as late as after 24 hrs to 48 hrs and they were all dumped there. This is how a 5 Star airline was treating its biz class customers.

Then came the Air China flight and the connecting flight from Air China was around 12 hours apart. Promptly the biz class passengers were driven to the hotel.

Here was an airline which is till date spending millions and millions on ads and proclaiming itself to be a  5 star airline, but was actually worse then the poorest airline of the world. Infact, when they refused to give me a hotel, I said, I am prepared to pay for additional 100$ and take a hotel room on my own. As much as I can pay 5000$ for the ticket, this will be small money for my comfort.  But this also they turned it down stating that they cannot manage to get a transit visa for me. Though right in front of me, they did it for another passenger.

Well, I already have enough life experiences of sleeping on couches on railway stations to tents in a forest to other simple life options. Therefore, I managed it in the lounge. The so called lounge is again a very basic place with seats scattered around and view of the parking space. The view consistently hurts you, when you see that in the parking lot a Pakistani attending the parking lot, is managing the place at temperatures of 50deg C wearing a heavy uniform.

Next, after reaching Jakarta, I wrote again a mail to the CEO and also complained on their website. But never ever got a response from them. Is this height of shamelessness ? Does such an organization call itself a 5 star airline ? Will you fly such an airline after reading this?

These are typical Tota Ram managed companies. Who believe in making money by any means. Never again did I fly Qatar and so did I tell all my friends to avoid this airline.

Against, it my best experiences have been with Singapore Airline, Emirates and to my utmost surprise KLM. Infact, KLM was the most memorable experience, where the hostess, not only pampered you,, but had an uncanny wit and humor to keep you well engaged. The cute little Amsterdam  house souvenir is another big attraction of KLM.  Even Malaysia airline, where the hostess asked me to write a complaint as my veggie food was not on board, despite request Promptly came a reply to me within one week and they offered me to upgrade me next time on my upcoming flight. What a gesture. Which is 5 star now. Qatar or an underdog Malaysian ?

Zurich Fund Millionaire, Tota Rams

How much the Managers work like Tota Ram is another good and true story here. Though it relates to many of my close friends and I only hope they will only read and laugh at themselves. But then there were CEOs and Top Managers , who are supposed to be evaluating risk at each stage of biz, failed to see the nuisance in the scheme.

Way back in the year 2004, a smart Manager from an Internationally renowned bank came to look for investors from the expat community of Indian Indonesians.

Factory to factory and door to door he traveled explaining, how the Zurich Fund ( One of their funds ) would make them a millionaire after 10 years . All one had to do was to invest religiously on monthly basis a certain amount. And the catch was that , if the fund investment is stopped before 10 years, then there is a huge exit load. Working out to earnings even lower then the one invested. So, once you are in, then there are no exit doors in the scheme. And of-course, in the fine print is that everything is linked to the international equity market, where Zurich will invest.

The finance knowledge of most technical guys is usually zero, but they all believe that they they understand fully the investment products. So, many of them got trapped in the presentation and enrolled for the scheme, hoping that in the year 2014, they will pull out a million dollar.

The same manager also came to me and made exactly the same presentation luring me into the million dollar bubble. But of-course for me, I will put hundred questions, before I invest even a single dollar. I clearly saw the trap and excused myself . Lucky me. Not that I have always made high returns on all my investments, but at-least I managed to not lose money ,even in the 2008 financial crisis. Thanks to my MBA in finance.

Now, what happened with the fund. In the year 2008 of financial crisis, the value of the fund became so low that whatever was invested was not even worth one third. A few years later , which is now, the fund is somewhat better, but largely many not be able to recoup the investment. One and everyone who invested into the fund lost out heavily. Against million dollar, now they look for getting the principal back as already good enough.

The manager who came to sell the product , quietly left the bank, the bank itself got taken over by another bank and the legacy of defaults continued.

Because, so many of us are trained, shaped, educated and molded in the industry to not question anything , nor learn about the system before getting into it. The original Parrot shows up at most decisions in life, whether it is for self or for the company. More one sees this error routinely in their company decision making. Though there the cost is to the share holders.

The Parrot still sits in the cage, still sings the broken record of , "I will be a millionaire"

Polyester Plant Doomed!

As a young engineer, I joined a PSF maker , who prided itself that all work would be done by executive/ managers themselves and they would not employ any assistants or staff or junior level staff.  The executives were given a little higher salary , but practically, the whole plant was running on contractual agreement. From Senior Managers to Operators, everyone was on a contract, renewable after 1 year.

Well in a chemical or a process Industry, the manual job is anyway very small and basically it is about managing a control panel and rarely turning a valve on or off. So, it was not a big deal about assistants or no assistants on the floor. However, what turned out eventually was that most executives and managers, who were supposed to be doing job of engineers and managers were now behaving like a skilled operator.

Therefore, if a Spinning or Draw Line manager could put a pack or fight against the crimper and keep breaking his head against broken filament lines, then he was a better operator then others. However, no one ever tried to use his brains to see, if he could stop the frequent breakdowns.

Once the pack heater would heat the packs to 280deg, yet all the safety pins would break on spinning machine. This went on for 10 days, but since everyone is designed to be an operator, they all would replace the pack with another one and ask maintenance to check the issue. Till one day,  I found that there was a fan on the top of the pack heater that did not run and discovered that the fan belt had broken. Result was that though the packs were still heating to the temperature, but the convection heating was not inside the core. The fan belt was changed and things became normal. This is how most spinning or fibre line was run. Faults would repeat, but no one waited and tried to find the reason as they were all designed as super operators.

The worst case, was that the Textile Section was given over to a Manager, who had zero experience in Textile and had come from Carbon Black. He simply ruined the place. First, if you don't have the experience, then you don't adventure into it at a senior position and that too for a start up plant, which has to make a position in the market. Now, this man , because of his zero experience, but high arrogance, went into ruin the whole project.

One would see day and night the failure of fibre line, but inexperience was ruining the place and no one had the solutions. The cutter blades would fail prematurely, the fibre length was not consistent. The tenacity was not uniform, the frequent crimper break down also meant that the drawing was intermittent and hence denier variation was part and parcel of the product. The whole quality had been screwed up.

His mismanagement kept the morale of the whole team low, the quality suffered and after 6 months, the company was sitting on tons and tons of material, which could not be sold.

It is only one single Bad Apple, who had brought an investment of multi million dollar to a halt and losses piling up by the day. Yet interestingly the top management did not find a problem with this joker, but tried to run the plant further under his stewardship. 

The contractual system made many a good managers leave the company, the inexperienced or those who could not find a job elsewhere continued. The stress on the managers were so high that one of my colleagues, who later got promoted as a manager lost his life to a heart attack.

The company virtually became BIFR case and got sold later to a large Polyester producer in India.

This man was later transferred to another carbon black plant and he did well for himself there. Only if the top management would have kept the right people and not misadventure d into this contractual system of management, perhaps, it would have done better. Industrial Marketing is another big weakness with commodity fibres and yarns. 

Barbad-e-Gulistan karne ko bas ek hi Uli Kafi Tah. ( Only one Bad Apple was Enough to rot the full plant )