Originally Posted by
CabinCrewe
55% loads? "Hugely encouraging"? Something doesn't quite add up there. Hadn't realised it was still so low.
Well looking through the Birmingham forum, it would appear they are only achieving 55% loads on Qatar Airways routes too, and has been operating from there for several years now.
Is the Welsh government offering an incentive or subsidiaries for Qatar to operate the route? If so, the proof in the pudding will be, if they continue when these finish.
Qatar Airways are in a qaundry, they are barred from operating to numerous Middle Eastern countries at the moment, due to a political spat between these countries and the Qatar government. It was hoped it would all be resolved in a few weeks, but that was 3-4 years ago! Then when the airline have a huge orders for wide bodied airvryaft, which they can usually fill on short haul routes feeding Middle Eastern passengers through their mega hub, they are now unsure what to do with all these aircraft. Then hence why Qatar are now at Cardiff operating routes which many airlines would consider marginal.
I think the smaller 787-8 makes these routes work from an economic stand point and are operating to a number of smaller European cities which previously would not be considered for such routes to the Middle East, like Gothenburg, Malta, Sarajevo, etc...
The airline has been quite conservative with their prices, and not flooding the market with crazy prices. While they offer some fairly decent prices, the deals are usually UK wide deals and Cardiff rarely gets any cheaper fares than other UK airport they operate from, from when I've been looking at fares.
The idea was of travelling on a long haul flight, which is only half full snd been able to spread out, sounds a dream to me. Might be a reason to use the route!