Qatar Airways is to introduce an additional daily flight between Doha and London Heathrow from the start of the Northern Summer schedules on March 25, 2012. The additional service on the fast expanding route takes the airline’s capacity up from 28 to 35 flights each week and will enable additional connection opportunities into Asia Pacific from its Doha International Airport hub, a key part of its business model.
According to Akbar Al Baker, Chief Executive Officer, Qatar Airways, the additional capacity reflected the growing importance of London to the airline’s international operations and would also help meet an expected increase in demand for the Olympics taking place in the British capital next summer.
“London has been one of our best-performing routes and it was only a matter of time before we could look at increasing frequency to meet the high demand, enabling our loyal customers and those travelling with us for the first time, to take full advantage of the high levels of service we provide,” he said.
The airline will use its flagship Boeing 777 on the new service providing seating for 42 passengers in Business Class and 217 in Economy. It currently uses the 777 on one of its existing four daily flights with the additional two rotations flown by a mix of Airbus A330-200, A330-300 and A340-600 aircraft.
“This increased capacity will provide greater connectivity for our passengers to and from Heathrow across key business and leisure destinations, including Bali, Bangkok, Delhi, Islamabad, Maldives, Melbourne, and launching summer of next year, Perth,” added Akbar Al Baker.
An estimated 107,000 O&D passengers travelled between London Heathrow and Doha in the past year, a route that is also served on a daily basis by British Airways via Bahrain. But, as mentioned above, Qatar Airways’ business strategy is based on transfer traffic not O&D passengers alone and despite holding a 70 per cent share of this market, its point-to-point traffic only accounts for around 14 per cent of the traffic its flies to and from London Heathrow. Its top ten continuation markets according to statistics are Colombo, Kathmandu, Manila, Dubai, Bangkok, Amritsar, Goa, Melbourne, Dhaka and Kuwait City.
Meanwhile, rival Emirates Airline has also revealed plans to expand at London heathrow but that it will achieve its growth by a further capacity rather than frequency increase. The Dubai-based carrier has announced it will introduce an Airbus A380 on the fourth of its five daily flights between Dubai and London Heathrow. The Super Jumbo will replace a Boeing 777-300ER on the carrier’s EK006/007 service from March 25, 2012, adding further capacity on what is one of the airline’s busiest routes. The carrier, the largest operator of the A380, first launched services to London with the type in December 2008 on its EK001/002 flight. A second daily rotation was introduced from June last year on its EK003/004 service, while a third daily rotation was announced just last month and will be introduced on the EK029/030 service from January 24, 2012.
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