Crisis in the Middle East, another glimmer of hope: Qatar Airways brings its Airbus A380s back into service
The danger, at least for the moment, is averted. And fans of the Airbus A380 can breathe a sigh of relief. Because, [...]
Qatar Airways
Oneworld
LHR
Qatar
The danger, at least for the moment, is averted. And fans of the Airbus A380 can breathe a sigh of relief. Because, as we have unfortunately been able to see in the past, when a quadriget is parked 'temporarily,' as they say, the risk of that 'temporarily' turning into 'definitive' is always just around the corner.
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Instead, as he had hoped a few weeks ago, tollowing the sudden removal of its eight Airbus A380s from its active fleet., Qatar Airways will put them back into service starting next June 16.
Especially enjoying this will be passengers flying from the Doha hub to London and to Bangkok, routes along which the A380 will be operated on two daily rotations.
So if you have booked with Qatar for next summer to head to Thailand, you will enjoy the second leg of the trip aboard the Superjumbo, which also has the distinction of being the only type of aircraft in Qatar Airways' fleet (apart from some ex-Cathay Pacific Boeing 777-300ERs) to have First (8 seats at the front of the upper deck) among the service classes on board.
The eight Qatar A380s had been taken out of service and parked about three weeks ago, when the truce between the United States and Iran was still to be reached and Doha was, despite itself, in an extremely displaced geographical position to Tehran's drone and missile raids. The carrier was the one among the three Gulf biggies that suffered most from the consequences of the war, as its airspace was closed to civilian traffic for several days.
The collapse in destinations served and flights operated daily has gone hand in hand with a collapse in demand, which prompted the company to leave ground much of its fleet for several days, including the giant A380s that can seat 517 passengers (8 in First, 48 in Business and 461 in Economy).
Confident that things could improve within a few weeks, Qatar Airways had nevertheless 'scheduled' the return to service of its Superjumbos for June 16. The current lull in conditions bodes well for an actual return to normalcy, but of course if bombs, drones and missiles were to rage again...well, that would be a different story.
