Thanks for the update A300Man.
I am quite surprised at BMI's decision to fly to DXB from LHR, the market is getting saturated with BA flying twice a day, EK 3 times daily, Royal Brunei 4x weekly and Biman daily. Not adding of course all the airlines where you could connect through such as LH, KL, AZ, GF and of course QR.
If they want the route to work they should try to interline into Asia and DXB is good hub for that.
"5) Qatar Airways to join Star Alliance in June 2004???????? This news is hot and apparently accurate!"
There has been talk of this for sometime, even Al-Baker in interviews dating back to the day the MUC route was started in 1998 said that QR are hoping to enter Star Alliance once they get to a certain size. Do you happen to know if the auditors from Star visited already? and did LH sort everything out with the previous audit?
"(I seem to recall another MiddleEastern airline trying to do the same thing, without much success - QR)"
Are you sure, QR hasn't put the A319CJ into scheduled service yet. Technically the aircraft belongs to the Amiri flight and only does occasional charters. Another A319CJ (LR) is coming in May, it is registered A7-CJA and will be configured with 108 seats. It will be flying to Tripoli and Moscow from July with thrice weekly flights to each destination.
On the subject of Alliances. Does anyone know what happened with Gulf Air. They were supposed to anounce there alliance choice "early 2003" and were supposedly joining star according to flight international. I am sure QR and GF wouldn't want to be in the same position as TG and SQ. Having to share the same alliance and the same home turf.