I love flying with Qatar Airways. They have a phenomenal onboard product, and flying with them is my favorite way to earn American AAdvantage miles, given their participation in oneworld.
I’m also amused by Qatar Airways. Their CEO, Akbar Al Baker, is one of the most outspoken guys in the airline industry. He says some pretty ridiculous stuff, and he’s also the biggest optimist I’ve ever met. In other words, take what he says with a grain of salt when it comes to Qatar Airways’ future, since he constantly over promises. That’s not to say that he isn’t a bright guy and doesn’t run a great airline, but he simply consistently stretches the truth, or even outright lies.
Anyway, Qatar Airways has set an interesting growth goal, in spite of the challenges they face due to the Gulf blockade. Qatar Airways wants to fly to 250 destinations by 2022. Specifically, they want to fly to at least 220 destinations with passenger planes, while the remaining destinations would be served by cargo planes only. It’s logical they’d set a goal for 2022, given that Qatar is hosting the World Cup then.
For reference, the airline currently flies to just over 160 destinations, so they’d need to add about 60 new destinations over the next four years, or about 15 destinations per year. That’s a lot of destinations for an airline to add.
How realistic is adding 15 destinations per year?
Perhaps an airlines’ past record of adding new routes is an accurate indicator of their future performance. I’ve never seen an airline that “announces” new routes without following through on them quite to the degree that Qatar Airways does.
For example, in late 2016, Qatar Airways announced that they’d add service to the following destinations:
- Canberra, Australia
- Dublin, Ireland
- Las Vegas, United States
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Santiago, Chile
- Medan, Indonesia
- Tabuk, Saudi Arabia
- Yanbu, Saudi Arabia
Now, in fairness, this was before the Gulf blockade happened, though how many of those destinations have they added? Two — just Canberra and Dublin. Las Vegas, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, and Medan never happened, and the Saudi Arabia destinations didn’t happen due to the blockade.
Then in March of this year, Qatar Airways announced that they’d add service to the following destinations:
- Cardiff, United Kingdom
- London Gatwick, United Kingdom
- Tallinn, Estonia
- Lisbon, Portugal
- Malaga, Spain
- Thessaloniki, Greece
- Valletta, Malta
- Antalya, Turkey
- Da Nang, Vietnam
- Davao, Philippines
- Langkawi, Malaysia
- Cebu, Philippines
- Luxembourg
- Bodrum, Turkey
They have indeed scheduled new year-round service to Cardiff, London Gatwick, and Thessaloniki, through the end of the schedule. They’ve also scheduled seasonal service to Malaga, Antalya, and Bodrum, but it remains to be seen if those flights will be renewed beyond then.
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