Also, the airline's sudden award of additional traffic rights to India by the Indian Authorities has suddenly meant that QR has had to roster planes and people almost overnight to cope with the increased frequencies. (Use them or lose them.........)
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This increase is definitely NOT SUDDEN. Unless you want to call a rule which has been around for three years as sudden!. In India , under what is known as "winter open skies" , carriers who already have traffic rights can apply for increased frequencies to those cities where they already operate for the five months from November to March. There is theoretically no limit to these increased frequencies. Apparently Qatar has decided to make the maximum use of it this time, literally putting every piece of spare metal they have into the Indian routes. So you have the situation of Cochin going up from 3 to 14 weekly, HYD 3 to 12 , TRV 7 to 12 weekly etc. As I heard, Qatar is the one who is making maximum use of this free for alll offer and the yeiedls are dropping like anything, now as I understand that price controls have gone as well.