Qatar Airways will upgrade all its German services to Airbus A350s as more jets are delivered.
The carrier is capitalising on a near 2-year lead over Germany’s Lufthansa in receiving the industry’s newest wide-body model.
Qatar deployed the A350 on Doha-Frankfurt trips earlier this year and will make the switch on its 2daily Munich services in October and November, with Berlin to follow, said Frederic Gossot, country manager for Germany and Austria.
“Germany is a very important market, the 2nd-biggest in terms of revenue in Europe after the UK,”said Mr Gossot.
“Our business class has been growing strongly.”
Source: Airbus
While Qatar was the first A350 customer, Lufthansa will not get its first plane until November/2016.
The Qatar A350s have 36 business berths, versus 22 on the Boeing 787-8s it has used for Frankfurt and Munich flights, so that the upgrade will add 784 premium seats a week to the 2 destinations.
Qatar is already at the 35-weekly flight limit of its air-service agreement with Germany, although it could choose to spread the services across five destinations rather than the current three.
This would be nice and all if Airbus would actually deliver the planes! According to ABCDlist.nl, it's been since June 14th that Airbus delivered an A350 to Qatar. The next A350 destined for Qatar rolled out on June 24th and still hasn't been delivered.
ReplyDeleteHow about reporting the reasons behind the delivery delays and not just rosy news.
Actually, the real news is that the A350 is replacing the 787-8. If the reason behind the delays was news worthy, Akbar Al Baker would have been ranting by now. If he is not concerned, then neither should anyone else.
ReplyDeleteNo bad news, the ramp-up is on track. 2 A/C should be delivered by end of this month MSN0008 for QTR and MSN0015 for HVN. Where was a thunderstorm with hail in TLS some weeks ago, this could probably one reason for a minor delay. Airbus will deliver, be patient.
ReplyDeleteIncorrect. The 787 was never intended to stay on any given route after the A350-900's were introduced into the fleet. This is obvious since the A350-900 is more of a machine than the 787-8. The 788 basically opened the route and the A350-900 was placed on the route when load factors were steady to warrant the equipment swap since it costs more to operate the -900 than the -8 but you get more premium seats with the 900.
ReplyDeleteA Hail storm would only apply if the flight testing was affected but since manufacturing is done in an enclosed environment shielded from the elements, I don't see that as a viable option. Something is obviously up but we need more information to pin point what exactly is the hold up.
Maybe I was correct about the deliveries now said to be the 'norm'. It seems the new 'norm' rate has been announced to suit present circumstances, not the original delivery dates given over 3 years ago when by this year 5per month was said delivery date.Leaving 19 aircraft short at years end. Anyway, Airbus does drag its feet,now Boeing has announced that the new 777-9x will start deliveries in 2022 carrying 400 passengers.This will undermine even further the proposed A380neo,which still has not been announced one way or the other. I think Emirates will dump the A380neo,using that as an excuse and buy the 777-9x in hundreds.The supposed buy by Emirates of the A350 is all smoke and mirrors-Clark will buy Boeing be sure of that.
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