Qatar has a population of over 2.5 million but only about 300,000 of those are native Qataris. Even if they have different last names, chances are they're somehow related.

This is true, briefly thought I was in manila when doing a hotel stop over, only the hotel manager seems to be a native. Horrible country, but I'll do the gov subsided stopover frequently when travelling back and forth.

Except that imagine the issue is non-safety related and the regulator which happens to be related to the Airline company grounded them on requests of the Airline during low traffic times to put more pressure on the manufacturer and maybe profit from higher damage payments.... (Purely speculative to give a point for the next argument.)

I.e. we can't say if the regulator acted correct with safety concern or corrupt until we know what is actually going one. Just because something seems to be "proper safety orientated acting" on the first sight doesn't mean it is and neither mean it's not corrupt...

I'd say this is correct. Qataris have one rule for them and another for everyone visiting or working ( the flippas, Nepalese etc), a friend is quite well connected as part of chemical supplies to oil industry, more like store at origin and broker nowadays, they live by different laws than the mere mortal (like me) passing through. You can live it large if you have the right connections - connection to above - one form of corruption doesn't exists it's systematic so yeah making the regulator act to protect a private contract condition is very plausible in qatar

I live in Qatar, and the Qataris are notorious for finding ways to avoid paying their bills, delaying payment for extremely long periods, or asking for unreasonable reductions. Claiming something is wrong or faulty is a common tactic, another one is to substantially expand the scope of a project, and then refuse to pay when the project inevitably runs over the original deadline.

Akbar Al Baker pulled similar cons with the construction of Doha airport, demanding the project be accelerated but refusing to pay for the extra work that would be involved. Bechtel and Lindner/ Depa Interiors are two companies that spring to mind. They also suffered due to the erratic and insanely inefficient bureaucracy that is endemic in Qatar - 60-70% of Qataris "Work" in government jobs.

Similar stories can be heard of tower construction in Qatar. Empty and unfinished towers littler the country due the Qataris failing to pay their dues to construction companies. This article superficially covers it: https://www.constructionweekonline.com/business/article-3775...

Will be interesting to see if the pill the world cup off next year with this style of bullshit.

You don't know the half of it. When they held the Asian cup, they were so concerned with the stadiums looking empty, they forced laborers to go and fill the seats. Problem is that many legitimate ticket holders were then denied entry! Of course people got angry about that, so the police saw fit to start administering beatings to people.

Now image that scenario with drunken football hooligans instead!

The pill -> they pull. Hard enough with alcohol in the shithole never mind pills ;)