Now, in fairness, they said they’d launch these routes in 2018-2019, though you’d think they would want to start selling seats on the routes sooner rather than later. Personally I’d be shocked if more than half of these routes are actually added by the end of 2019.

The reason I even bring up these supposed new routes is because the airline has a history of announcing new routes and not following through on them, so I see no reason this announcement would be any different.

Comparing Qatar Airways’ destinations to other airlines
Qatar Airways already has a huge global route network, with 160+ destinations. They actually fly to more destinations than Emirates, which flies to “only” 150+ destinations. However, that makes sense, because Emirates only operates widebodies, so it’s not feasible for them to operate to many of the smaller airports that Qatar Airways can serve. Emirates certainly operates a lot more frequencies in the markets they do fly to, but they don’t fly as many places.

Perhaps the gold standard when it comes to the number of destinations served is Turkish Airlines. They fly to more countries than any airline in the world, and they have a fleet with a mix of narrowbody and widebody aircraft, which maximizes the number of places they can fly. They fly to 230 international destinations in 119 countries, so it seems like Qatar Airways is hoping to serve as many destinations as them within a few years.

The catch is that Qatar Airways is blocked out of many of the markets that could potentially lead to that growth, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Bottom line
Qatar Airways is in a difficult spot at the moment. They’re losing money, and the current Gulf blockade not only limits the destinations they can serve, but also increases their flight time on many routes. On one hand I commend them for continuing to move forward (which is only possible thanks to their government having faith in the airline and willing to invest a lot of money), though at the same time I’ll go on record now as saying that there’s no way they’ll serve 220 destinations by 2022.

Generally history is the best indicator of what will happen in the future, and while the airline has grown quickly, they’ve almost always over promises their new routes. I’d guess they’ll get to somewhere between 190 and 200 destinations by 2022.

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