Qatar Airways Invasive Physical Exams Lawsuit: Appeal Ruling

Five Australian women are pursuing a lawsuit against Qatar Airways over invasive physical examinations conducted on them at Hamad International Airport in Doha in October 2020, and in July 2025 the Full Federal Court of Australia ruled the case can proceed to trial, reversing a lower court decision that had thrown it out. The trial is expected in 2026.¹

What Happened at Hamad International Airport

On October 2, 2020, a newborn baby girl was found abandoned in a plastic bag in a bin at the airport’s departures lounge.² Authorities responded by searching for the mother among women in the terminal, an operation that affected passengers on as many as ten aircraft.³

Women on Qatar Airways flight QR908, bound for Sydney, were ordered off the plane by armed guards and escorted to ambulances on the tarmac.⁴ Inside the ambulances, medical staff told them to remove their underwear and physically examined them to check whether any had recently given birth.⁵ The passengers were not told about the abandoned baby, were given no explanation for what was happening, and could not provide informed consent.² The flight was delayed roughly four hours. Thirteen Australian women on that flight were among those examined.³

Who Is Suing and What They Claim

In 2021, five of the Australian women filed suit in Australia’s Federal Court, seeking damages for unlawful physical contact and false imprisonment. Their pleadings raise negligence, assault, false imprisonment, and battery. The defendants are Qatar Airways, MATAR (the airport operator, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qatar Airways), and the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority.⁶

Their lawyer, Damian Sturzaker of Marque Lawyers in Sydney, has said the women turned to litigation because of a “perceived lack of action from Doha.” Despite Qatar’s public apology, no compensation was offered, and the women tried repeatedly to resolve the matter with Qatar Airways before suing.⁶⁷

The Montreal Convention Fight

The case has turned on a threshold legal question rather than the facts of what happened. The Montreal Convention is an international treaty that governs airline liability for injuries to passengers during international air travel. Article 17 makes carriers liable for injuries that occur “on board the aircraft” or “in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking.”¹ The Convention also operates as an exclusive remedy, meaning if an incident falls within its scope it displaces other domestic law claims; if it falls outside, plaintiffs may lose the ability to sue the carrier at all.

In April 2024, Federal Court Justice John Halley ruled against the women. Applying a three-part test that looked at what the passengers were doing, where they were relative to the aircraft, and how much control the airline had over them at the relevant moment, he found the examinations happened in ambulances physically separated from the plane, were unconnected to boarding, and were carried out by police and medical staff Qatar Airways did not control. Because the events sat outside Article 17, Halley held, the Convention’s exclusivity principle also barred separate negligence claims under Australian law. He summarily dismissed the case against Qatar Airways.⁸

The July 2025 Appeal Ruling

The women appealed. On July 24, 2025, a three-judge panel of the Full Federal Court — Justices Angus Stewart, Debra Mortimer, and James Stellios — unanimously overturned the dismissal.⁶ The panel held that whether the examinations occurred during the “operations of embarking or disembarking” was a question of “complexity, turning on assessments of fact and degree” that could not be resolved on a summary basis and had to go to trial.⁸ The plaintiffs’ argument is that because they were removed from the aircraft, examined, and then returned to the same plane, their journey had never ended, keeping them within Article 17.¹

The rulings, DHI22 v Qatar Airways Group QCSC (No 1) [2025] FCAFC 91 and (No 2) [2025] FCAFC 92, restored the claims against Qatar Airways and MATAR and ordered those defendants to pay the costs of the appeal.⁹¹⁰ The court also gave the plaintiffs leave to amend their case against MATAR to argue that the nurse who conducted the examinations was acting as an agent or employee of the airport operator.⁸

The Qatar Civil Aviation Authority Is Out

The appeal did not revive every claim. The Full Federal Court upheld the dismissal of the case against the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, ruling that as an arm of the Qatari state it was entitled to sovereign immunity.¹⁰ The women’s lawyers have said they are considering seeking leave to appeal that finding to Australia’s High Court.¹

What Qatar Has Already Done

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Thani issued a formal state apology on October 28, 2020, acknowledging that “standard procedures were violated.”¹¹ Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne called the treatment “grossly disturbing, offensive, and concerning,” saying it went “beyond circumstances in which the women could give free and informed consent.”¹²

Qatari prosecutors charged airport security employees for ordering the examinations, saying they had acted “unilaterally” and faced up to three years in prison.¹³ According to later reporting, the prosecution ultimately produced a suspended jail term for an airport official.⁶ No compensation has been paid to the women.¹

What Happens Next

With the appellate ruling in place, the case against Qatar Airways and MATAR is expected to go to trial in 2026.¹⁷ The trial will test the factual question the appellate court flagged: whether what happened on the Doha tarmac counts as part of the operations of disembarking, and whether Qatar Airways and its airport operator are liable for it.

1
CNN. Australian Women Win Right to Sue Qatar Airways Over Invasive Examinations
2
BBC News. Qatar Says It Has Identified Parents of Newborn Found in Airport Bin
3
The Guardian. Women on 10 Flights Subject to Medical Examinations at Doha Airport
4
Al Jazeera. Passengers Strip Searched After Baby Found at Doha Airport
5
The Guardian. Australian Witness Recounts Qatar Strip Search Ordeal
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BBC News. Australian Women Win Right to Sue Qatar Airways
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ABC News Australia. Women Win Right to Sue Qatar Airways Over Sydney Flight
8
Australian Aviation. Qatar Invasive Search Victims Can Sue Airline, Court Rules
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ABC News Australia. Australian Women Win Right to Sue Qatar Airways
10
The Guardian. Court Grants Leave for Australian Women to Sue Qatar Airways
11
China Daily HK. Qatar Apologizes for Invasive Searches of Women at Airport
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BBC News. Qatar Airport: Australia Demands Answers Over Women’s Invasive Searches
13
CNN. Qatar Identifies Parents of Baby Dumped in Airport Bin