Akbar Al Baker was never a big fan of the Airbus A380. Now the head of Qatar Airways is considering decommissioning the super jumbo forever.
Qatar Airways is generous. With a stake of 9.99 percent, the golf airline is Cathay Pacific’s third largest shareholder. If the airline from Hong Kong needs a financial injection in the corona crisis, “we will definitely support it,” Qatar Airways chief Akbar Al Baker told the South China Morning Post newspaper.
They were able to do this, even if they themselves had been hit hard by the global decline in demand. In another interview, Al Baker makes it clear that Qatar Airways is also suffering badly. He tells the Airline Ratings portal that his airline has only money to keep it going for a short time.
Qatar Airways significantly reduces fleet size
He also hopes for state aid. “We will certainly ask our government for equity at some point,” said Al Baker. The airline has maintained routes to around 30 destinations and from the end of June plans to expand the flight schedule to around 80 destinations again. As a national airline, it belongs entirely to the Emirate of Qatar.
The golf airline is also not getting away without austerity measures. It has already started to significantly reduce the 45,000-strong workforce. In addition, it plans to reduce the fleet by a quarter. A year ago, Qatar Airways proudly celebrated the takeover of the 250th aircraft.
A380 is far from flying
The future of the Airbus A380 is extremely uncertain. “Qatar Airways is parking its ten A380s and they won’t be returning for at least a year,” says Al Baker, “maybe never.” The airline boss had already criticized the super jumbo in the past as too heavy and too inefficient.
At the beginning of last year, he then announced that he would be sending the super jumbos from the tenth anniversary of his pension. Qatar Airways added the first A380 to the fleet in 2014, the tenth in 2018. The golf airline is operating it to Bangkok, Frankfurt, Guangzhou, London, Melbourne, Paris, Perth and Sydney.
Q-Suite creates distance
Al Baker believes that aviation will recover to the level of 2019 earlier than 2023, as Lufthansa expects. However, he predicts: “Profits will decrease as premium traffic decreases.” Among other things, Al Baker points out that companies are getting used to the use of online conferences. After the global financial crisis in 2008 heralded the decline of first-class travel, Corona was the next blow to business travel.
Meanwhile, Qatar wants to continue to equip its business class aircraft with the Q-Suite. The mini suites currently also have the advantage that they can be used to implement social distance and hygiene measures.
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