Envoy - If Doha was the final destination then yes I would agree. However I think it is transfer traffic (whether locally in the Middle East or further afield) that would be the main reason to start this route. I fly regularly on EK Muscat-Dubai-Bham, in my experiences there seem to be proportionally very few actual Dubai-Bham customers on the flight. With Amritsar being an underserved market from BHX and the growth in demand at BHX for EK, there is now enough market base for both EK and QR to operate from BHX? As for being too close to MAN, well i'm sure that was probably said about EK, PK and CO when they started yet they all continue to operate successfully from both.
From a purely personal point of view, I think perhaps in this economic climate QR are perhaps looking at other European cities for that all important high yield business but as a pax from the Middle East, a bit of competition for EK into BHX would not go amiss.......
