Qatar Airways Stops Selling Flights to Canberra

Qatar Airways’ new route to Canberra could be dead in the water before it even started.

In July of this year, Qatar Airways announced that it would launch daily flights from Doha to Canberra via Melbourne from 1 October 2022. But shortly before this route was due to launch, the Qatari airline announced that the start date would be pushed back by two months to December 2022 due to “operational issues”.

While there was some speculation that the operational issue could have been the FIFA World Cup, The Canberra Times reported that Qatar Airways had failed to come to an agreement with Swissport, the company that provides ground handlers at Canberra Airport.

Qatar Airways previously flew from Doha to Canberra via Sydney in the years prior to the pandemic, but ceased flying to Canberra in early 2020. The new route was to become Canberra Airport’s only international service since Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines pulled out due to COVID-19.

The new Doha-Melbourne-Canberra route was to be run alongside Qatar Airways’ existing daily Doha-Melbourne service, adding a second daily flight between Doha and Melbourne. Although Qatar Airways has not yet launched the Melbourne-Canberra sector of its new service, it did commence the Doha-Melbourne sector on schedule.

Canberra-Doha flights removed from sale

Initially, Qatar Airways said that the relaunch of flights to Canberra would just be delayed for two months. But earlier this week, Qatar Airways removed all of the seats on its Canberra-Doha flights from sale through to the end of the currently published schedule.

The flights still appear in the GDS, but it’s no longer possible to book a ticket to/from Canberra. This means that the flights have not yet been officially cancelled, but it’s normally the first step towards a cancellation.

Seats on the Melbourne-Doha legs of QR988 and QR989 are still available for sale.

Qatar Airways doesn’t have the rights for a second daily Melbourne service

It’s quite likely that Qatar Airways never really wanted to launch a flight to Canberra in the first place. But they have had to do this as a workaround to be able to launch a second daily flight to Melbourne.

Under the existing Air Services Agreement between Australia and Qatar, Qatari airlines may only fly up to 28 weekly frequencies between Doha and the four major Australian airports – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Qatar Airways already offers daily services to these four airports, and therefore cannot add any more flights.

There is no limit, however, to the number of flights Qatar Airways can offer to other Australian airports such as Adelaide or Canberra. The loophole here is that flights to secondary airports may have a stopover at a major airport. So, Qatar Airways decided to launch a Doha-Melbourne-Canberra route to get around this limitation while still adding a second daily non-stop service between Doha and Melbourne.

Due to cabotage regulations, Qatar Airways is not allowed to sell seats to local passengers travelling between Melbourne and Canberra. So, it would likely have flown that add-on sector at a loss in order to be allowed to operate the second Doha-Melbourne flight.

The bizarre part about all of this is that Qatar Airways was still able to launch its second daily Melbourne-Doha flight on 1 October, without the flight continuing to Canberra. To get around this, Qatar Airways has been sending a Boeing 777 without passengers every day from Melbourne to Adelaide and back. Presumably, some freight is being carried.

Qatar is currently negotiating a new Air Services Agreement with the Australian government, and is reportedly pushing to be allowed more flights to the major cities. Qantas is allegedly trying to block this from happening on the grounds it is commercially unfair because Qatar Airways is a government-owned airline.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: QR returning to CBR

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.