Cardiff: Qatar Airways, will it return?

[Nuffsaid]

Turkish owe 4.5billion USD, it is not in a good financial position, even before Covid. Besides, it’s nickname is jihadi airlines as it was the airline of choice for most of the European jihadi’s travelling to Turkey, who then used other transport to cross the border into Syria. Turkey itself is a supporter of terrorism.

 

[Nigel B]

Nuff Said on that!

 

[Jerry]

I'd be pretty shocked if Turkish picked Cardiff. Bristol would be almost nailed on for that as Turkish wouldn't have the limitations that Qatar has in that they can deploy narrow body aircraft and wouldn't need a cargo operation as well and they'd potentially already have Star Alliance partners there in Brussels Airlines and Lufthansa. Going a bit off thread but hub wise CWL needs ones closer to home back Dublin and Paris with potentially Aer Lingus and Air France as operators.
As for Qatar fingers crossed for summer 2022!!

 

[Jerry]

Hopefully good news for Cardiff Airport.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1350031221963702272

 

[Seasider]

That seems positive.

 

[geoff]

That's really good news.

 

[Jerry]

Obviously it doesn't guarentee any dates and it could be Qatar Airways may suspend the route possibly until start of winter 2021 or summer 2022 but it does provide hope that they will return.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Slightly unwieldy sentence from the CEO (if reported correctly) but it appears to mean that all routes that were operating pre-COVID will return, although some will return earlier than others...... I think.

He can't give any dates because obviously no-one can know how or in what timescale the virus situation will continue to develop. It would be a tremendous bonus for CWL and its travellers if the airline returned this year but there are so many imponderables.

If I had to bet I would say 2022 at the earliest. My wife and I pay regular VFR visits to Australia and should have visited again last year. Towards the end of 2020 we had hoped that late 2021 might be possible for our next visit but that hope has all but evaporated given the Australian Government's determination to keep its borders secure for as long as necessary.

We won't book only to find that when we are due to travel it's not possible to go because of government restrictions or airline viability (whichever airline). Even booking very late which is not ideal for such a journey still holds the danger of sudden government regulations making the trip impossible.

If many people think as we do that will mean the leisure part of long-haul travel will take longer than might have been hoped before it begins to settle down into anything like pre-pandemic levels.

 

[Jerry]

Booking to Australia is an expensive gamble at the moment. Even though Qatar Airways are rumoured to have some good deals at the moment its a gamble.

 

[Nethercote2019]

Very restricted passenger numbers allowed, with the strict quarantine restrictions, from what I have read BNE only allow only 525 per week ! & SYD 1500 ! So if you can get a ticket it’s going to be expensive, there is a lot of Auzzies who have been waiting months to get back

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Booking to Australia is an expensive gamble at the moment. Even though Qatar Airways are rumoured to have some good deals at the moment its a gamble.

Our other grandson (our son's son) returned to his Bristol home last September after two years working in Australia and used Qatar. His Australian girlfriend came with him - she has a UK working visa - and although neither are aviation enthusiasts they were impressed with the Qatar offering. The flight was into LHR as the CWL service had of course been suspended when they returned.

Very restricted passenger numbers allowed, with the strict quarantine restrictions, from what I have read BNE only allow only 525 per week ! & SYD 1500 ! So if you can get a ticket it’s going to be expensive, there is a lot of Auzzies who have been waiting months to get back

Some Australian citizens waiting to return home from abroad are less than amused at the sight of foreign tennis players being given precedence over them to take part in the Australian Open, and some of the players are now moaning at having to spend 14 days self-isolation in an Australian hotel.

Australia and New Zealand are likely to be amongst the last countries to which Qatar flies long-haul that will open their borders completely even though it might still mean having to show proof of perhaps a vaccine or negative virus test or both. We'd like to think it would be some time this year or early next year so we can visit our daughter and her family in Australia again, and our granddaughter who is out from England working in another part of Oz, but we can only hope.

Obviously the more countries that permit inter-continental travel the quicker such services as Qatar at CWL are likely to return.

 

[Foxlimayankee]

There's probably 3 main markets propping up the CWL QR route.
1) UK-Australia/NZ travel - which as already discussed isn't likely to recover for some time. NZ especially have performed very well in holding Covid back, but are now behind most other countries in rolling out the vaccine as it initially wasn't a priority for them. It's unlikely this market will start to recover until at the earliest mid 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021. It will then take time to recover to levels seen before. It will be interesting to see how Airlines respond to this, especially QR and EK. EK especially had a huge offering pre-covid, with many A380 flights each day from a number of different Airports. If EK don't restore their level of frequency to what it once was, QR could well benefit from the displaced catchments. I'm not sure on EK's position but I'm sure I've read somewhere that QR have no intention of bringing back the A380's any time soon.

2) UK long haul holiday market - Many CWL QR travellers were travelling on holiday to Asia, with Travel Agents also pushing holidays. People are itching to get on holiday but may now be more cautious on going long haul to more unknown countries. Whether those countries are ultimately safer remains to be seen, but the interpretation for the travelling public will likely be to travel to more well known places that may be deemed "safer". Fact and public intrepretation/cautiousness are two different things here.

3) Foreign students - Wales has seen a big increase in foreign students coming to take advantage of the UK education system. With the UK performing so badly in fighting covid, along with a very unstable and confused plan for education, this may result in lower demand for foreign students to come to Wales' universities just yet.

Without the combination of the above 3, i can really see the CWL QR route struggling to regain popularity, but hopefully QR remain dedicated to the route for some time.

It's worth noting we are now nearly only 2 months away from the route restarting again and it still being on sale. I think had QR planned to suspend the route for longer it would've been taken off sale by now. I think at this stage, the deciding factor on it returning is now the covid travel restrictions and lockdown restrictions over the coming weeks.

 

[IanFarquharson]

There's probably 3 main markets propping up the CWL QR route.
1) UK-Australia/NZ travel - which as already discussed isn't likely to recover for some time. NZ especially have performed very well in holding Covid back, but are now behind most other countries in rolling out the vaccine as it initially wasn't a priority for them. It's unlikely this market will start to recover until at the earliest mid 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021. It will then take time to recover to levels seen before. It will be interesting to see how Airlines respond to this, especially QR and EK. EK especially had a huge offering pre-covid, with many A380 flights each day from a number of different Airports. If EK don't restore their level of frequency to what it once was, QR could well benefit from the displaced catchments. I'm not sure on EK's position but I'm sure I've read somewhere that QR have no intention of bringing back the A380's any time soon.

2) UK long haul holiday market - Many CWL QR travellers were travelling on holiday to Asia, with Travel Agents also pushing holidays. People are itching to get on holiday but may now be more cautious on going long haul to more unknown countries. Whether those countries are ultimately safer remains to be seen, but the interpretation for the travelling public will likely be to travel to more well known places that may be deemed "safer". Fact and public intrepretation/cautiousness are two different things here.

3) Foreign students - Wales has seen a big increase in foreign students coming to take advantage of the UK education system. With the UK performing so badly in fighting covid, along with a very unstable and confused plan for education, this may result in lower demand for foreign students to come to Wales' universities just yet.

Without the combination of the above 3, i can really see the CWL QR route struggling to regain popularity, but hopefully QR remain dedicated to the route for some time.

It's worth noting we are now nearly only 2 months away from the route restarting again and it still being on sale. I think had QR planned to suspend the route for longer it would've been taken off sale by now. I think at this stage, the deciding factor on it returning is now the covid travel restrictions and lockdown restrictions over the coming weeks.

Qatar will not be at CWL or BHX in 2021

 

[Jerry]

Qatar will not be at CWL or BHX in 2021

Yet both are still onsale. You'd have thought they'd remove them offsale by now.

 

[Jerry]

I've seen a tweet and a post on the dried fruit forum saying Cardiff and Birmingham have been taken offsale but Cardiff is still onsale on the app and I'm told on their website.

 

[Jerry]

So apparently in an interview in Airliner World magazine the Vice president of Qatar Airways has stated that the airline intends to return to Cardiff and Birmingham.

 

[geoff]

It would be a huge boost to have Qatar back.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Qatar Airways was mentioned in passing in another CWL thread today. Is there any more news about its potential return to CWL beyond #1216 of 28 June 2021 above?

I believe that Qatar is now operating a service between Doha and LHR and possibly also to MAN.

One of our grandsons had a long Qatar Airways trip on Friday and yesterday between Melbourne, Australia and Boston, USA via Doha - 29 hours in total including aircraft change at DOH. I checked his DOH-BOS flight on FR24 from time to time yesterday and there seemed to be several Qatar Airways flights going to various USA cities almost in convoy with his flight to BOS. The same applied with his MEL-DOH flight with other Australian cities being served.

It is to be hoped then that more UK cities will resume before too long.

 

[Jerry]

Nothing from what i've seen, guess we can only keep our fingers crossed that Doha will return but i can't see it happening since 2023 personally but we have been surprised before!

One of our grandsons had a long Qatar Airways trip on Friday and yesterday between Melbourne, Australia and Boston, USA via Doha - 29 hours in total including aircraft change at DOH. I checked his DOH-BOS flight on FR24 from time to time yesterday and there seemed to be several Qatar Airways flights going to various USA cities almost in convoy with his flight to BOS. The same applied with his MEL-DOH flight with other Australian cities being served.

Very interesting route, i'd have thought that getting to the USA he'd have gone the Pacific route and via a West coast hub?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Nothing from what i've seen, guess we can only keep our fingers crossed that Doha will return but i can't see it happening since 2023 personally but we have been surprised before!

Very interesting route, i'd have thought that getting to the USA he'd have gone the Pacific route and via a West coast hub?

He had two routes booked with built-in cancellation options. The other was trans-Pacific from SYD to LAX with a US airline (I think it was United), then domestic flight LAX to BOS. They were options in case one of the routes became unviable because of Covid restrictions - I won't bore you with the hoops he had to jump through even to leave Australia let alone enter the USA. It was uncertain right up to the day of departure.

In the end the ME option became the preferred one and some people apparently say there is less jet lag that way from Australia to the US east coast. His father (our son-in-law) travelled MEL to east coast USA across the Pacific a few years ago and found it quite stressful.