Privacy Notice
Privacy Notice
Qatar Airways is committed to protecting your personal data and your right to privacy ("Qatar Airways", "we", or "us").
1.2 This privacy notice (together with our Terms and Conditions, our Cookie Policy and any other documents referred to herein) sets out the basis on which we process Personal Data (“Privacy Notice”). By "Personal Data" we mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
1.3 The latest version of our Privacy Notice can be found on our website www.qatarairways.com (“Website”). If we change this Privacy Notice, we will inform you about the changes by publishing the updated version on our Website. Subject to applicable laws, the English version of this Privacy Notice will prevail over any version of this Privacy Notice translated in another language.
1.4 The data controller is Qatar Airways Group, Q.C.S.C. a Qatari Closed Shareholding Company with its registered office at Qatar Airways Tower, PO Box 22550, Doha, State of Qatar ("Qatar Airways", "we", or "us").
This Privacy Notice applies to the processing by Qatar Airways of Personal Data we process in connection with your relationship with us as a customer or potential customer of our airline or when you use our Website, our Qatar Airways Mobile App.
Qatar Airways is responsible for the processing of all Personal Data described in this Privacy Notice. In this Privacy Notice we explain what Personal Data we process and for what purposes, and to which persons or entities the Personal Data will be provided.
4.1 The sources from which we collect Personal Data depend on, among other things, our relationship or interaction with you.
4.2 We may collect and receive Personal Data directly from you, your authorised representative(s), other individuals acting on your behalf (e.g. your travel agent), third parties that provide data to support activities (e.g. fraud prevention, underwriting, and marketing) or that assist us in providing services to you (e.g. your travel agent, or our authorized agents, including when you:
(a) use any of our services, including when you travel with us or use airports where we operate or any facilities within those airports, such as our lounge facilities;
(b) use our Website or Mobile Apps;
(c) communicate with us by email, telephone, in writing, through our customer services pages, instant messaging, in person, reservations offices, or social media platforms; or
(d) register, create or modify an online or in-app account with us, including your Qatar Airways basic account, Privilege Club account or Beyond Business account.
4.3 Where you disclose Personal Data on behalf of another person, you are responsible for ensuring that the individual whose Personal Data is supplied to Qatar Airways has authorized the disclosure, is informed of and, where appropriate, consents to our processing of their Personal Data in accordance with this Privacy Notice. Where the disclosure is in respect of a child’s Personal Data, you should do as only as the parent or legal guardian of that child, provide consent or authorisation to process that child’s Personal Data and enter into any relevant contracts on behalf of that child.
5.1 For the performance of our contract with you
(i) What does this mean?
When you travel with us or request ancillary or other services, we process your Personal Data (including PNR and passport and advance passenger information (“API”)) in connection with the services we offer you such as:
(a) making a reservation, facilitating your bookings and travel arrangements including transfers and stop overs;
(b) administering and providing you with benefits from our Privilege Club Programme or Beyond Business by Qatar Airways;
(c) administering Al Maha Meet and Greet Services or services provided by Qatar Aviation Services such as ground handling, baggage services, travel and tours;
(d) facilitating access to Qatar Airways lounges, oneworld Alliance lounges or third party lounges;
(e) administering city tours and activities, ground transportation services, hotel bookings, travel insurance, car rentals or other ancillary services that you have requested through us, other Qatar Airways group companies or other third party service providers; and
(f) facilitating duty free purchases.
We may send you reminders about incomplete bookings (i.e. cart recovery) and customer services emails to facilitate your booking completion. We also use your Personal Data in order to deliver products or services that we have agreed to provide to you, such as in-flight catering, baggage services and check-in boarding. Qatar Airways or our partners will provide you with flight alert, schedule changes, disruptions and other status messages. We may offer an upgrade of your cabin before your flight via email or via the Mobile App.
Qatar Airways may also disclose your Personal Data to your authorised representative(s) for the purpose of the relevant transaction or enquiry. In particular, each of the passengers who are grouped under the same booking reference (or Passenger Name Record (“PNR”) number shall be deemed to be authorised representatives of each of the other passengers under the same booking reference number.
When you make a booking, you will be provided with a booking reference number. Disclosing your booking reference number with your surname to other persons may allow them to access your booking details.
Where you have requested carriage of an unaccompanied child we will process your Personal Data and that of the child for administrative purposes in order to facilitate the booking and safe travel of the child.
(ii) What are our lawful bases for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data to the extent that it is necessary for the performance of any contracts that you have with the Qatar Airways group of companies, including the passenger transport contract.
(iii) What Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
We process Personal Data such as name and date of birth, contact details, passport details, nationality, your itinerary, payment information, order history.
5.2 For the assessment and acceptance of a customer when travelling with us or using our ancillary services
(i) What does this mean?
Qatar Airways processes Personal Data for assessment and acceptance purposes. This includes, confirming and verifying your identity or that of your authorised representative(s), verifying your identity at the security checkpoint and confirming your Personal Data at the check-in, during boarding or disembarkation and accessing lounges or other ancillary services.
We will also process your Personal Data for other administrative and regulatory purposes such as due diligence and transportation security screening against publicly available government and/or law enforcement agency sanctions lists. In addition, we may be required to verify health related documentation, based on the entry requirements in your country or destination or in transit.
Where you request medical clearance or conditional acceptance to assess your fitness to travel prior to your flight, the attending doctor will need to disclose necessary medical information to Qatar Airways and its commissioned medical advisors. This information will be solely used for the purpose of determining your fitness to fly.
(ii) What are our lawful bases for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data based on our legitimate business interest of assisting with your booking and providing ancillary services to you. Where we are required to process your personal data to assess your fitness to fly, we do so as the processing is necessary for the performance of your passenger transport contract with us and our compliance with our legal obligations.
(iii) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
For this purpose, we may process your contact details such as your postal address and email address, travel documents, your name and date of birth, payment and credit information, meal preference, baggage details, health details and details of your correspondence with us.
(iv) Special categories of personal data
Special categories of personal data such as medical information, are subject to stricter rules and a higher level of protection under the applicable data protection and privacy laws. We rely on your explicit consent to process this special category information where it is provided to us in your Medical Information Form.
(v) Automated decision-making
We may use automated decision-making to prevent fraudulent transactions. Please call our Contact Centre if you wish to discuss any declined transactions.
5.3 When you interact with Qatar Airways
(a) For answering your questions or responding to your complaints or requests
(i) What does this mean?
If you get in touch with us in person, by email, by telephone, live chat or other channels offered on our customer care services pages your Personal Data is processed to address your questions or complaints.
(ii) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data based on the performance of our passenger transport contract with you or in our legitimate interest in providing customer care.
(iii) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
We process your Personal Data such as name, PNR number, contact details, ticket number, frequent flyer number, country of residence, baggage information, special requests and all other Personal Data necessary to answer your question. We may process special categories of Personal Data, such as health information to assess your fitness to travel or in relation to special assistance requests and biometric voice recordings to confirm you identity. Subject to applicable laws, we may monitor or record your phone conversations for training and customer service purposes, to comply with relevant legal obligations and to make and defend claims. If you visit one of our Reservations and Ticketing Offices or a Qatar Airways Lounge, you may be monitored by closed circuit television (“CCTV”) for security purposes.
(b) If you open an account with us, to administer and manage the account and to ensure confidentiality and security of your transactions and purchases
(i) What does this mean?
Qatar Airways processes Personal Data when you choose to register or modify an online, in-app or your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account. This allows us to manage your account and keep you updated about your account activity.
In order to manage your accounts and administer the Privilege Club programme, Qatar Airways will:
(a) determine tier status and to provide personalised services on this basis;
(b) communicate and interact with you at different touchpoints throughout your journey (for example service recovery, our referral program, compliments or complaints);
(c) process special categories of your Personal Data (such as data revealing a medical condition or religious belief) only where necessary to meet your special needs and requirements;
(d) where you have consented, to personalise the services and offers you receive; and
(e) detect and prevent fraud in connection with your online account.
Please refer to the Qatar Airways Privilege Club Terms and Conditions for details on how your Personal Data is collected and processed by our Privilege Club.
(ii) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We process your Personal Data to perform the contract between you and Qatar Airways as (i) a website user, (ii) passenger travelling on Qatar Airways, or (iii) a Privilege Club member.
(iii) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
For your Qatar Airways basic account, we process your name, email address, title, telephone number, gender and date of birth, address, any other information you have added to your account, login data, display name, role, the details of your purchases and transactions and payment details.
For your Privilege Club account, we process your Personal Data you have added to your account, login data and the details of your transactions and payment details. Where you have nominated family members you wish to enrol in the Privilege Club as a Main Member (as defined in the Privilege Club Terms and Conditions) or use Benefits for any Guest (as defined in the Privilege Club Terms and Conditions), we process their Personal Data. Where you have nominated a travel coordinator (as defined in the Privilege Club Terms and Conditions), we process Personal Data about them including name, email address, and title.
(c) When you connect with us via social media
(i) What does this mean?
Qatar Airways is active on social media platforms. When you contact us via social media, “share”, “like” content appearing on social media platforms or follow us, we will use Personal Data you supply in order to respond to your messages or comments and to enable you to share our content.
When you log into your Qatar Airways account or create an account using your social media credentials via the Website or Mobile Apps, you grant permission to the relevant social network your Personal Data with us for the purposes of logging you into your account or creating your account.
(ii) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data based on the performance of our contract with you or in our legitimate interest in providing customer care.
(iii) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
Depending on the social media platform you chosen to login/create your Qatar Airways account and the information that you have provided to that platform, we will use Personal Data which is supplied by social media platforms including your name, email address, language preference, profile picture, gender and the other Personal Data based on your social media account or privacy settings.
Depending on the social media platform you chosen to interact with us, we will use relevant Personal Data included in your message or comments to respond to you or assist you further.
(d) For development and improvement of our services
(i) What does this mean?
It is important for us to continue to provide you with our services and uphold the Qatar Airways brand. We use your Personal Data so that we can assess, analyse and improve our services. For this purpose, we keep track of how often you read our newsletters, visit our Website and/or Mobile Apps and what services you purchase through our Website or Mobile Apps. We use analytics tools (including cookies, web beacons and other tracking technologies) to optimize the efficiency, design and quality of our Website. These tools allow us to, for example, identify and repair technical errors such as broken links that impair the Website’s functionality. Further information regarding tracking technologies is set out in section 6 (below).
We also regularly use surveys to find out whether you are satisfied with our services and experiences and conduct studies to help enhance customer experience. These surveys are conducted through our Website, Mobile Apps or by phone. We use your responses to surveys for quality assessments and to improve the customer experience.
(ii) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data based on your consent, where you have provided this consent at the time of responding to a survey, or our legitimate business interests in assessing and improving our services.
(iii) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
For these purposes, we may use your name, date of birth, contact details, payment and credit information and any correspondence with us. In addition, we use the Personal Data you entered into the Website and/or Mobile Apps or based on the functionalities of the Website and/or Mobile Apps and the technical data from your device such as its IP-address (including approximate location), the pages you visited on our Websites or Apps, your clicks, user inputs, scrolling, access times, visit duration and pages viewed. If you choose to participate in our surveys, we can ask you to provide us with Personal Data, such as age group, gender and preferences in terms of choice of destination.
5.4 In the event of an emergency
(a) What does this mean?
In the event of an emergency during your flight or travel journey, Qatar Airways will be required to provide emergency assistance on the ground or in-flight, communicate with your next of kin and share your Personal Data and that of your emergency contact or next of kin, with other response and government agencies for the purpose of providing emergency assistance.
(b) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data and that of your next of kind based on the protection of your vital interests and our legal obligation to comply with the applicable laws.
(c) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
For this purpose, we process your name, address, telephone number, gender, nationality, passport number and the Personal Data of the emergency contact that you named while making your booking and in relation to your next of kin their names, addresses and contact details.
5.5 Your choices
(a) If you participate in Contests, to manage your participation
(i) What does this mean?
If you give us your consent to do so, we can send you emails with invitations to participate in prize contests, events and/or competitions (collectively “Contests”). If you choose to participate in any Contest, we need your Personal Data to allow you to participate, to administer the Contest, where you are a winner to inform you of this, to process the delivery of and distribution of the prizes and to measure the response to Contests.
(ii) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data for our legitimate interest in carrying out and administering the Contests.
(iii) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
We may process your name, address, email address, passport copy, country and proof of residence, age verification documentation, personal identification documentation, Privilege Club number, signature and your entries in the Contest. In accordance with the terms and conditions of the relevant Contest we may also share your Personal Data with third party sponsors of prizes in order to administer the prizes to you.
(b) If you subscribe to our mailing list, electronic communications or to push notifications via our Website or Mobile Apps
(i) What does this mean?
If you give us your consent to do so, we will inform you about our special offers, news and marketing communications via the channel that you have selected.
(ii) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We process your Personal Data based on your consent or, in some cases, our legitimate interest in providing you with regular updates relating to our services, routes and fares.
(iii) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
We process your name and email address, your preferences and interests, (including those that you have actively shared with us, but also those inferred through your registered interactions with Qatar Airways Websites and Mobile Apps), (please see our Cookie Policy for more information), shopping history (both online if you link your purchases to your profile, and offline when making an offline purchase), and the links you click on in our emails.
(iv) Profiling
We may offer you personalised content and marketing based on the profiling of your Personal Data. Profiling is a form of automated processing of your information to evaluate, analyse or predict your preferences and behaviour.
5.6 For management of our business
(a) What does this mean?
We process your Personal Data to help us analyse the performance and organisation of our business including internal management, compliance with internal policies and procedures. We also process your Personal Data for finance and accounting, archiving and insurance purposes, legal and business consulting and in the context of dispute resolution.
(b) What are our legal grounds for doing this?
We will process your Personal Data based on our legitimate business interests in maintaining the expected service levels to you.
(c) Which Personal Data do we use for this purpose?
For this purpose, we process your contact details such as your address and email address, personal details such as your name and date of birth, payment and credit information, payment and order history, correspondence with Qatar Airways, data generated during the performance of the agreement between you and Qatar Airways, correspondence with Qatar Airways and the information you provide when responding to our surveys.
5.7 Advertising
We use advertising platforms like Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, Facebook, and may use other advertising platforms to serve online advertising promoting our products and services both in search engines, other websites and networks. Some of these activities are done through remarketing, where we display advertisements that we think will be useful. To do so, our site uses tracking scripts from Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook and may use tracking pixels and scripts from other third parties to collect information about your use of our Website in order to display remarketing advertisement relevant to your interests and/or to measure the success of our advertising campaigns. These third-party tracking pixels and scripts may set cookies on your browser and use various tracking technologies. We also use Personal Data like email addresses to show you useful advertisements.
The information collected by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other third parties through their tracking pixels and scripts is stored and processed by them and is subject to their own policies and practices. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with their privacy policies and terms of use. For information on your rights and choices regarding tracking and online advertising, including how to block or opt-out of such tracking, see https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1
For advertising purposes, we use Personal Data to generate a "lookalike audience" or “similar audience” through advertising platforms such as Google or Facebook. This allows us to target advertisements on their networks to potential customers who appear to have shared interests or similar demographics to our existing customers, based on the platforms' own data. We do not have access to the identity of anybody in the lookalike audience, unless they choose to click on the advertisement. If you wish to opt out of "similar audiences" in Google, you can do so through your Ads Settings and for Facebook you can visit your account and follow the steps.
5.8 Our Legitimate Interests
Where we rely on legitimate interests as a basis for processing your Personal Data, we have considered your interests, rights and freedoms and carry out a ‘balancing test’ to ensure that our processing is necessary and that your fundamental rights of privacy are not outweighed by our legitimate interests. You have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Data and can find out more information about our legitimate interests by contacting us using the details below.
Cookies are small files of information which save and retrieve information about your visit to our Website – for example, how you entered our Website, how you navigated through the Website and what information was of interest to you. Read more about how we use cookies in our Cookie Policy which is available on our Website. At this time, we do not respond to browser ‘do not track’ signals, as we await for a uniform standard put forth by regulators or the privacy industry. Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked. You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the preferences or settings page of your web browser.
7.1 Access to your Personal Data within Qatar Airways Group and data transfers
As a global organisation headquartered in the State of Qatar, Personal Data may be transferred internationally throughout Qatar Airways' Group to offer you a complete package of services and ancillary or complementary products which you have requested and for business or administrative purposes.
We may send the Personal Data to Qatar Airways Group entities located in countries whose data protection laws may not be as extensive as those in the European Economic Area (“EEA”). If necessary, Qatar Airways will review the laws and practices of each recipient country and ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to comply with the requirements for the international transfer of personal data under applicable data protection and privacy laws. Qatar Airways employees are authorised to access Personal Data only if needed to serve the applicable purpose and to perform their jobs.
7.2 Access to Your Personal Data by Third Parties
Qatar Airways may transfer your Personal Data to third parties and to countries outside of your country of residence from time to time, including outside of the EEA. We may be required to disclose certain of your Personal Data in the following cases:
(a) to customs, border control, security, anti-terrorism and immigration authorities, which require by law access to booking and travel itinerary information including Advanced Passenger Information (“API”) and Passenger Name Records (“PNR”) for all passengers;
(b) to third parties including other airlines (such as codeshare partners and oneworld Alliance airlines), partners connected with our Privilege Club or Beyond Business (if you are a member), other service providers including those who are acting as our agent or sub-contractor, including, hoteliers, insurance companies, ground handling service providers, medical assistance providers, caterers, credit card and credit reference agencies, data analytics service providers, data processing service providers and our legal and other professional advisors;
(c) to third parties in connection with financing, securitization, insuring, restructuring, assignment or other disposal of all or part of our business or assets or in relation to defence of claims;
(d) to official authorities, including law enforcement, governmental and regulatory authorities, including health authorities: (a) if we believe disclosure is required by any applicable law or regulation; (b) to protect and defend our rights, or the rights or safety of third parties or (c) where it is in our legitimate interest to co-operate and share information with such authorities; and
(e) where you have made a travel booking, to passengers travelling under the same booking as you.
Organisations that are based outside of the EEA may not be subject to the same level of controls in regard to data protection as exist within the EEA. When third parties are given access to your Personal Data, we will take the required contractual, technical and organisational measures to ensure that your Personal Data is only processed if necessary for the relevant purpose. We use reasonable efforts to ensure that third parties will only process your Personal Data in accordance with applicable law. For transfers of personal data to countries outside the EEA, Qatar Airways may use the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission as safeguards.
Safeguards
Qatar Airways has taken adequate safeguards to ensure the confidentiality and security of your Personal Data. We are committed to ensuring that your Personal Data is secure. In an effort to prevent unauthorised access to, or disclosure of, your Personal Data, we have put in place physical, technical and administrative measures to safeguard your Personal Data against accidental or unlawful destruction or accidental loss, damage, alteration, unauthorised disclosure or access, as well as all other forms of unlawful processing or further processing. In order to protect the security of your information, where necessary, we use encryption technology when collecting or transferring Personal Data.
Although we use reasonable efforts to protect your Personal Data we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Data transmitted to our Website or Mobile Apps via internet or similar connection.
Children
Due to the nature of our services as an airline, we may collect travel information, which may include Personal Data of persons below age 18 (“Children”) when it is required to comply with the law, or as otherwise required to provide transportation needs and services (e.g.Qatar Airways offers special discounts to infants and Children and needs to assess fare eligibility, verification at check in and sharing of data to another airline if a transfer is involved or for transport of unaccompanied minors). We do not address our Website or services to Children or knowingly collect Personal Data directly from Children-. We are not able to identify the age of persons who access and use our Website or Mobile Apps or subscribe to our newsletters. If you are a parent or a guardian of a child who has provided Personal Data without your knowledge and consent, you may request us to unsubscribe the child.
Retention
We will retain Personal Data for as long as it is necessary to fulfil the specified purpose for which it was collected, the legal or business purposes of Qatar Airways as described in this Privacy Notice and in line with our data retention policies, or as required by relevant laws. When erasing Personal Data, we will take commercially reasonable and technically possible measures to make the Personal Data irrecoverable or irreproducible in accordance with the applicable laws.
You can exercise your rights to access, rectification, erasure, restrict processing, data portability, objection or rights in relation to automated individual decision-making, including profiling, in relation to the Personal Data that Qatar Airways processes at any time by sending a request via a dedicated ‘subject access request’ portal on the Contact Us page of our Website. You may have other privacy rights, including rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), depending upon your country of residence.
Before proceeding with your request, we will verify your identity to ensure that we provide the requested information to the data subject to whom it pertains. If you have authorised an agent to make a request on your behalf, we require that you or your authorised agent provide us with a copy of the written permission to submit such a request on your behalf.
We will not charge a fee to respond to your request unless the request may be deemed as manifestly unfounded or excessive.
Upon request, we can provide you with a list of third party personal information handlers under the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China.
If you feel that we do not comply with applicable privacy rules you have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent data protection authority in your country of residence.
If you no longer want to receive our newsletters, you can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any email containing our newsletter. In addition, you can raise an unsubscribe request by emailing or calling our Customer Care Center or by sending us a request by post to the following address:
Qatar Airways Group
Qatar Airways Tower 1
PO Box 22550
Doha, State of Qatar
Attention: Qatar Airways Direct Marketing Team – Digital Marketing
When raising a request to unsubscribe by e-mail, call or post, it may take up to 30 working days to process your request and to update our systems to remove your email address from our mailing list.
Should you have any questions about the processing of your Personal Data or this Privacy Notice, please contact:
Qatar Airways Group, Q.C.S.C.
Qatar Airways Tower 1
PO Box 22550
Doha, State of Qatar
Attention: Data Protection Officer
If you have any concerns about our use of your Personal Data, you can send an email to our Data Protection Officer here. You can also complain to the competent supervisory authority if you are unhappy with how we have used your Personal Data.
Supplementary Notice for Korean Users
If you are resident in South Korea, we are legally required to make you aware of the matters set out in Supplementary Notice for Korean Users.
Data protection statement
In addition to our Privacy notice, Qatar Airways has adopted a revised data protection approach which provides a global and simplified legal basis for all databases and applications sharing personal data within and outside the Qatar Airways Group of companies.