Qatar Airways to Launch Montreal Link

Doha-based Qatar Airways is to inaugurate flights to Montreal from June, according to its Chief Executive Officer, Akbar Al-Baker. The Canadian city will be one of the 22 destinations the Middle Eastern carrier plans to add to its network by 2013 and its fourth in North America after Houston, New York and Washington DC. Qatar Airways secured traffic rights into Canada last autumn but until now had not outlined how it would use the slots. It will be the first Gulf airline to serve Montreal and plans to utilise a Boeing 777 on the three-times weekly link to Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Qatar Airways already holds a 23 per cent share of the approximately 5,500 O&D passengers that travelled between Doha and Montreal in the year ending November 2010, but currently these passengers are flying on connecting services from London Heathrow with Air Canada and New York JFK with American Airlines. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is a close second with 22 per cent of passengers connecting via its Amsterdam Schiphol hub. A direct service will certainly attract much of this custom and also stimulate demand further. But there is a wider market than just Doha – Montreal as the Canadian city has a diverse population. Around 220,000 passengers travel from Montreal to the wider Middle East region with the largest markets being Beirut, Amman, Damascus and Tehran. Most of these passengers have to connect via either Toronto or fly through European hub airports such as Frankfurt, London Heathrow or Paris CDG to get to their end destination. Qatar Airways would be an excellent alternative with just a short-sector transfer in the Middle East. In fact Tunisair has announced that it too will offer seasonal flights to Montreal from April 2012 when it takes delivery of its first Airbus A330.

Almost 950,000 O&D passengers travelled between Canada and the Middle East between December 2009 and November 2010 with the main traffic flow from Toronto. So why didn’t Qatar Airways select Toronto as its first Canadian destination? Well, a quick look at the table below shows why. There are already nine weekly services from the Middle East, providing over 2,000 seats to Canada.

Source: Flightbase (February 14-20)

Qatar Airways has also announced plans to add a second daily flight on its Doha – Singapore route. It currently flies a Boeing 777 to Singapore every day with the service continuing on to the Indonesian resort island of Bali. The new flight, operated by an Airbus A330, will be introduced on a phased basis, initially three flights per week from May 1, a further three from October 1 and then a seventh from November 3. The additional rotation will vastly improve connectivity at Qatar’s Doha hub with passengers able to take advantage of a morning or evening departure from Doha or an evening and late night departure from Singapore.

When questioned on the reasons behind the new service, Akbar Al Baker highlighted the success of the route. “Singapore has been one of our best-performing routes in the entire region for a long time,” he said, revealing that the carrier has secured “load factors consistently in the high 90s”. In the year ending November 2010 more than 27,000 O&D passengers travelled between Doha and Singapore.

“The Far East continues to be a key market for Qatar Airways. We see even greater potential to expand further into this region and are evaluating several new route options which we intend to launch over the next 18 months,” Al Baker added.