Qatar Airways seems to have gone new route mad, with an announcement of a bundle of new routes.
Qatar Airways Boeing 777-300ER at Hamad International Airport, Doha – Image, Economy Class and Beyond
The headline grabber (in the containing battle of who has the longest route… although this battle could be compared to who has the biggest… oh I’m not going there…) is that Qatar Airways will launch a Doha to Auckland route on the 3rd December 2016, to be operated with a Boeing 777.
Ever get the feeling between some airlines “Mine is bigger than yours” is a recurring theme?
Anyway – onto the other routes, split by region for everyone’s readability
Europe:
- Doha to Pisa, commences 2nd August 2016 with a Daily Service operated by an Airbus A320
- Doha to Sarajevo, commences 7 September with three flights a week operated by an Airbus A320
- Doha to Helsinki. commences 10th October 2016 with a Daily Service operated by an Airbus A320 family aircraft
- Doha to Skopje, commences November 2016 with three flights a week operated by an Airbus A320 family aircraft
- Doha to Nice (Route resumption), commences Summer 2017 with five flights a week with a wide-body aircraft.
Africa:
- Doha to Marrakech will commence in the July 2016 operating three times a week with a Boeing 787 Dreamliner
- Doha and Windhoek (Namibia) will commence on 28th September 2016 operating four flights a week. Equipment has not been defined yet.
- Doha to Seychelles will resume on 12 December 2016 operating a daily service. Equipment has not been defined yet.
- Doha to Douala (Cameroon) and Libreville (Gabon) utilising one aircraft in January 2017 operating three services a week
- Doha to Lusaka (Zambia) will commence in summer 2017 with a three times weekly service.
South West Pacific/Southeast Asia:
- Doha to Auckland – as covered in the top of the article. Daily Service, with a Boeing 777 from 3rd December 2016.
- Doha to Krabi (Thailand) will begin on 6th December 2016 operating four services a week
- Doha to Chiang Mai (Thailand) will being in December 2016, operating three services a week
There’s a lot of capacity and routes to fill here – helped by Qatar Airways getting a new aircraft practically every ten days.
The trick of course with all this capacity is finding enough passengers to fill the planes…
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Pure insanity the amount of seats the Gulf carriers are introducing. No way these routes can make money and as we’ve seen on so many other thin routes, QR will be dumping J seats at a fraction of their normal cost. Suppose we love those $1500 business fares for MRs to places we’d never otherwise have considered visiting.