QATAR Airways is unlikely to fly into Brisbane at any point in the immediate future because of a failure between governments to reach a bilateral agreement.
Speaking with Travel Daily in Melbourne yesterday at the airline’s 10th anniversary celebration of flying to Australia, QR Senior Manager Adam Radwanski said the airline was “bilaterally constrained” and that the governmental deadlock “is something beyond the airline.”
“We’ve exhausted our allocations and so we now must work within the existing constraints,” Radwanski said.
“Time will tell, we’d love to have Brisbane and we’d be very confident that there would be not only passenger demand but also cargo demand…we have to wait for the governments to speak.”
Qatar Airways has achieved significant growth over the last decade, with Radwanski saying business had increased eight-fold and would soon see QR operating nearly 4,400 seats per day in and out of Australia.
However success remains elusive for Qatar’s service to Canberra, with Radwanski saying it “still needs more time to call it a long-term successful route” adding that it took QR’s Adelaide service almost four years to make it “very successful”.
ADL demand is now so strong that in 2020 QR will upgauge the destination to an A350-1000, adding about 40 more seats daily.
Radwanski dismissed criticisms that Qatar Airways deliberately undercuts the market, saying such comments by competitors bore little resemblance to reality.
“We are correctly priced with respect to what our product is in Australia…the long play has always been to run a sustainable and profitable airline and we’re confident we’re on the right track.”
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Source: traveldaily