Qatar Airways Confirms Airline Plan for Saudi Arabia

Fast-expanding Gulf carrier Qatar Airways has confirmed that it is among the operators to have expressed an interest to aviation authorities in launching a Kingdom of Saudi Arabian registered airline venture. The Doha-based carrier’s Chief Executive Officer, Akbar Al Baker, has held talks with His Royal Highness Prince Fahad bin Abdullah Al Saud to discuss opportunities arising from the Kingdom’s newly-launched aviation liberalisation policy, but has warned there are a number of factors that will influence its final decision.

With a market that is underserved and keen for greater domestic air services, Al Baker said the Kingdom represented “a key growth area”, but during the meeting, he expressed particular concern over excessive fuel charges in the Kingdom and the government’s policy of controlling domestic air fares which, he said, were “not in the interests of the travelling public nor airline operators”.

Al Baker noted that such factors were “detrimental to airlines” as fuel represented a major cost of operations. Capping airfares, he said will “never allow any airline to operate commercially in the Kingdom,” citing the demise of domestic carrier Sama Airlines due to such measures. He stressed that other airlines operating domestic flights within Saudi Arabia were facing the same problem of rising costs, pointing out these needed to be “seriously addressed”.

According to Al Baker, Qatar Airways is “keen to invest” in the Saudi domestic aviation market, but this was dependent on a “fundamental rethink” by the government of certain factors which needed to be tackled. In the table below we highlight the domestic operations in the Saudi Arabian market since 2000. During this eleven year period the market has been dominated by national carrier Saudia which accounted for 95.8 per cent of all the domestic seat capacity.

Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth in its 15 years of operation and currently operates a modern fleet of 109 aircraft to 117 key business and leisure destinations across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America from its Doha hub. Since the beginning of the year, Qatar Airways has launched flights to Baku (Azerbaijan); Tbilisi (Georgia); Kigali (Rwanda); Zagreb (Croatia), Erbil (Iraq), Baghdad (Iraq) and this week added Perth (Australia) to its network.

The airline inaugurated a three times weekly Boeing 777 connection to Western Australia’s mining and exploration hub on July 3, 2012, its second destination in the country after Melbourne and is already looking to improve frequency to a daily service by the end of the year. According to Akbar Al Baker, the city has enormous potential and growth, both as a competitive tourism destination and as the hub of Australia’s mining and exploration industry.

“There has never been a better time to expand in Australia – a time when the Australian dollar is strong and business and leisure travellers worldwide search for easier and quicker ways to connect and do business,” he said. “Our flight connections to Africa in particular will greatly please the people of Western Australia, whose strong links with the mining and business communities in East Africa signal enormous growth potential.

This coming week Qatar Airways will officially unveil its first Boeing 787 Dreamliner with the aircraft due to be displayed at the Farnborough International Air Show in the UK. The type will play an important role in the airline’s network strategy, replacing older aircraft initially but opening up new point-to-point options in the future. Upon entering service, Qatar Airways’ first 787 will initially operate on intra-Gulf routes for training purposes before making its maiden long-haul commercial flight between Doha and London Heathrow. Copenhagen, Manchester and Paris have all been mentioned as possible additional destinations for the type during the first phase of deliveries.

The debut of the aircraft marks a significant milestone as the carrier makes its final preparations toofficially receive and commercially introduce the first of 60 aircraft on order this year: it is due to take delivery of five 787s during 2012. “As the Middle East launch customer, we’re very excited that a new era of air travel with an unrivalled passenger experience is imminent, further proving Qatar Airways’ commitment to expand with one of the youngest and technically advanced fleets in the industry,” said Akbar Al Baker.

Qatar Airways already has its network expansion for the year ahead planned. Over the next few months it will launch services on a diverse portfolio of new routes, including Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (July 25); Mombasa, Kenya (August 15); Yangon, Myanmar (October 3); Maputo, Mozambique (October 31); and a date yet-to-be-announced to the Serbian capital Belgrade.