It’s not all in your head - flights beginning and ending in Doha on Qatar Airways are more expensive than flights transitting through the country. That’s because of competition - or, rather, lack of it, QR CEO Akbar Al Baker said in a frank interview with Arabic daily Al Watan.
“This is the rule of the game in a highly competitive market… Last year, about 22.5 million passengers used our airline and only 18-20 percent of them started their journey from Doha while the rest were transit passengers. If we increase the cost of the ticket purchased outside Qatar, we will be losing 80 percent of our customers.”
Read more: http://dohanews.co/post/41602057238/high-fares-from-doha-due-to-lack-of-competition#ixzz2JBBIHho2
First off, this CEO is a remarkably "frank" gentleman... in fact a bit worryingly frank lol.
ReplyDeleteSecond, It would seem that this is a issue faced by most of the gulfs large airlines. They're just too big for their own borders I reckon... How could a mammoth airline like Qatar Airways possibly sustain its size by revenues mostly from it's 1.5M population? off course it can't.
I agree with Mr. Al-Baker; more specifically, I think there's a niche here. These large airlines have built a brilliant business model. But in doing so they've ignored the cheaper client. I'm sure Jazeera and Arabia and waiting for the chance to jump on this opportunity, my guess is there is too much red tape in the GCC's landing laws. And the client pays the price.