A flight attendant stole a passenger’s phone. The airline acknowledged it, fired the crewmember, and covered the replacement cost of the device. But the passenger feels they’re being shortchanged. Are they?
According to the customer they were flying Qatar Airways business class from Doha to Singapore on March 28th. During the 8 hour and 15 minute flight they got up to use the lavatory. When they returned to their seat they realized they’d left their phone behind.
Qatar Airways Business Class Lavatory
They returned to the lavatory, but it was in use. A flight attendant exited the lav. The phone was gone. The passenger later tracked their phone to the crew’s hotel, and to the Philippines. They reported the incident to Qatar Airways. Usually an airline, or any company, won’t share this level of detail but the customer says that the theft was acknowledged and they were informed that the flight attendant was fired.
A few days later, their Security Investigations Manager reached out to confirm that the incident had been reviewed, they identified the crew member responsible, and he was dismissed from his position.
Qatar Airways Business Class Lavatory
The airline took “weeks” to contact the customer and they were reimbursed $722 as replacement cost of the phone. The customer has two complaints (besides Qatar taking too long to pay up):
- The airline characterized hte issue as “unattended personal belongings” rather than “theft”
- And wouldn’t reimburse for the time, effort and inconvenience associated with losing a phone
They feel that the airline should be more generous because they’re a business class passenger.
This wasn’t just any flight — this was Business Class with a supposedly world-leading airline. I switched to Qatar Airways after years of loyalty to Singapore Airlines, and this whole experience has been a massive letdown.
The first mistake was probably taking the phone with them to the lavatory. People don’t think about the germs their phones pick up in everyday life! I actually use a UV light box to sanitize my phone. Do you really want to be touching the device coming out of an airplane lavatory? That place is a bigger germ farm than that monkey in Outbreak.
I’m surprised that the flight attendant would pocket the phone. People do dumb things. $700 isn’t worth stealing, except in California before last year’s Proposition 36. And I’m surprised it was so easy to get an admission from the airline.
Still, they were correct to say that the customer left their belongings unattended. They left the phone behind in the bathroom. And it does not matter how it’s characterized – the airline is providing compensation. If you want a customer service gesture on top of the $722, ask for some miles, but Qatar isn’t going to cover the value of lost business meetings dealing with the phone. Those meetings couldn’t have been all that valuable if you blew them off to handle the phone! If these were multimillion dollar meetings, you’d just get a new phone and move on.
Singapore
While this passenger criticizes Qatar Airways here, it seems like they actually did more than I’d have expected and more than most here. And it sounds like the criticism is largely about a lack of obsequiousness by their customer care representatives – failing to acknowledge the customer’s importance as a business class passenger, or lean into just how much suffering the loss of their phone had caused.
Well, I mean, Qatar, the country, which owns the airline, is an authoritarian, semi-constitutional monarchy, so I doubt they have many labor protections, if any. Kind of like an ‘at-will’ state. Fire anyone for cause or on a whim, and there, unlike here, feel free to discriminate, especially on the basis of religion! Let’s not emulate that. The irony is that they’re ‘moderate’ for that part of the world. Hmm.
Well, I take my phone to the can. But I wouldn’t set it down in there!
Still, though, you’d think they’d like round it up to $1000 or something for the inconvenience (especially when it turns out it’s their own employee that lifted it.) And given they realized they’d left it and came back shortly (unattended is unattended, but it’d be a bit different if like they’d landed, they’d deplaned, they wandered around quite a while, THEN realized they’d left the phone on the plane, for instance.)
Personally, I have a Unihertz KeyOne, so people see they keyboard and think it’s an old Blackberry. Nobody would steal it. But even ignoring risk of theft, I tend to get a sub-$250 phone just because they do wear out, and the performance is quite good (Moore’s law… chip performance doubling every 18 monhts, or same speed for half the cost every 18 months.. is honestly long gone. But still, even a $99 phone has the CPU and RAM specs of a midrange from like 2 years ago and a 3-4 year old flagship phone.)
@hwertz — It’s wild to think that those prices would have doubled or even tripled if it weren’t for the manufactured crisis and subsequent exemption of phones, computers, chips from new tariffs.
Well they should’ve ponied up. The extra 1k is a lot cheaper than the negative press they’re getting now!
So if the customer had lost his phone himself. If the replacement of the phone was $722 and this is what Qatar reimbursed the cost for a brand new phone versus a refurbished one then he’s already ahead with brand new phone. Do we know of Qatar provided the customer with additional miles as compensation?? Did they offer a flight credit in addition to the new phone.
Bad PR
@Sexy_kitten7 @Craig Jones — Yeah, bad PR, but, like, for real, who cares, could happen on any airline; I’m still gonna fly them for Q-Suite and the Al Mourjan Garden Lounge. QR saved me especially during the pandemic when hardly anyone was flying anywhere. These guys were reliable and luxurious from mid-2020 onward. I can’t complain too much about them. Besides, they are the ones enabling me to be OW Emerald for the most part (via crediting their long-haul to AA). What can I say, as much as I’ll complain if I don’t like something, I happen to be a fan, based on my experience. Don’t worry, @Tim Dunn, this is just anecdotal, not scientific or objective financial data.
It’s called phone insurance, but, apparently, business class passenger is too clueless to purchase phone insurance. I really don’t have time for a bizarre story about a wage slave thief. I still fly QR whenever I feel like it, although my last flight to Maldives was on QR’s competitor EK.
I tend to believe there’s a population segment that figures they should get (or try to get) compensated massively for every corporate “failure.” In this case, I believe the airlene screwed up. Pay for a replacement phone at full retail of the brand’s current top model. Give a choice for a refund of the fare paid or a free future F/J r/t anywhere. That’s enough.
Good for QR not to give in to extortionists and DYKWIA narcissists.
Now ban the passenger. He/she is a business risk to the airline.
@Dave W. — Sure, there are scammers, but they are outliers. We deserve robust consumer protection regulations regardless, because when the ‘big’ corporations achieve forms of monopoly and regulatory capture, they can and do often abuse us with limited recourse. For instance, in the USA, we should have Congress legislation something similar to EU261 or Canada’s APPR, which could compensate passengers when there is a severe delay within the airline’s control like staffing or maintenance. It doesn’t bankrupt airlines, or cost us extra. And self-insurance isn’t enough. See the terms. 72 hour delays?! Absurd. We deserve better.
I think QR is probably right – from a definition basis – that is closer to “unattended personal belongings” versus theft, as I would classify theft as the intentional taking of property known to belong to someone else without permission. So, to that end alone, I think the definition is a closer fit. … but to me, that’s just a definition issue and misses the much larger points.
Those, IMHO, would be: 1) the handling and protocols of “unattended property” that employees may come into contact with … and 2) the removal, personal use of ANY property not owned by the employee or non-owned employee property that the employee doesn’t have explicit permission to use or possess.
Sounds like this person is milking it… attention seeking and entitled, they took the complaint seriously , acted promptly, dismissed the employee and the individual was compensated fully for the loss. A company has zero responsibility for an employee that steals unless they have previous evidence, complaints or prior thefts they were negligent and overlooked or failed to investigate. You’re not entitled to be unduly enriched, the company was as much a victim as the customer.
And they’re right in saying unattended property. The legal definition would be ‘theft by finding’
In criminal and property law, theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object, but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely lost or unattended before taking it for themselves.
I don’t care what cabin the passenger was flying in, the FA was a thief and the airline should have done more to make the passenger whole. I figure enough miles to fly one way in the cabin flown when this happened for the total one way including any connections sounds about right.
Dude carrying in old iPhone 8 and he expect them to buy him iPhone 16 Pro 512 gb lol.
This person sounds like an absolute KAREN!
You need to treat me better because I’m a business class passenger. What an Fing numpty.
Qatar air did the right thing even though the fault was the passenger’s & he/she still wants to complain? Get a life!