I don't really get this airport. It's supposed to be an international hub - mostly for use by Qatar Airways - but it just doesn't seem to be setup right and is far too small.

I went through Doha airport on each leg of my Manchester - Abu Dhabi trip, staying for around 2 hours each time and if it wasn't for the free wireless internet I would have been bored out of my mind.

On arrival everyone is herded into the security check area. There are only 3 or 4 baggage check machines to deal with all the arriving flights and the queue is only really managed for the last few metres. You end up with a mass of people all pushing their way to go to the waiting lane. You then have another longish wait to get to the front of the queue and be called forward. The staff are unfriendly and in my experience inept. The security guard was only bothered that I take my belt off; he wasn't interested when I showed my mobile phone so I walked through the metal detector with it in my hand and unsurprisingly the alarm went off. Nobody confronted me about it so I got my bag and moved on. I still don't understand the need for this security check - if everyone has just got off a flight, why do they need to have their bags scanned again? I have not had it in other countries I have been to.

Once you are in the waiting area things don't get a lot better. The airport seems old and small and on both occasions was overcrowded. After using the toilets on the outward journey I learnt my lesson and made sure to use the facilities on the plane instead! Basically as with the rest of the airport the toilets are old, not particularly clean and overcrowded - if you compared it to trying to go to the gents in a football stadium at half time you would not be far wrong.

There are a few shops that you can go to on the lower floor they are overpriced and not that good. The top floor has the gates, toilets, a sleeping area and a mosque. To be fair there are plenty of seats I really appreciated the free wireless. The connection is a bit hit and miss but I did manage to get a valuable five minute Skype chat to home.

We were grateful to be called forward to go on the plane early and this meant that we had to take a bus ride to the plane. |I was surprised to find the journey took at least fifteen minutes as we had to go right round the end of the runway - seems like a poor design to me.