I'd lay a pretty good wager they all flew, and they all flew from Heathrow, and they all flew from Heathrow on BA.
Supporting the local economy, and all that.
Long Haul
I think we need to have reasonable expectations of the region to support long-haul travel. I'd trade a poor smattering of long-hauls to limited destinations on probably sub-par aircraft, in return for a reliable and frequent connecting service into efficient and well-served hubs.
Its important to feed traffic into airline alliances. Whilst I'm sure QR are a fine airline, they aren't in an alliance, and their code-shares are not extensive, so their endpoints are limited compared to connecting into Oneworld, Star or Skyteam. (Although Skyteam are certainly, in my mind, placed third out of three alliances).