Airlines
Qatar Airways flew to Adelaide with 20% load factor in May
September 15th 2016
Data from Australia’s Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) has revealed that Qatar Airways transported 1,728 passengers in May on its Doha-Adelaide service. Read More » Given the route is served by one of the carrier’s A350-900s configured with 36 seats in business class and 247 in economy, that translated to an average load factor of 20.4% only. Loads on the corresponding Adelaide-Doha flight were significantly better at 56.8%, although this is still much lower than the latest global average as per IATA data (83.7%).
To be fair, Qatar Airways only launched the Adelaide route on May 1. However, its overall loads to its four destinations Down Under (Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth) in May and June were not particularly rosy either, especially on the inbound sectors from Doha. For May, the oneworld carrier filled 48.9% of seats from Doha to Australia, and 83.8% on the return flights. This improved to 60.5% and 89.1%, respectively, in June.
When launching Adelaide, Qatar Airways CEO, Akbar Al Baker, said “In our industry, it’s not always profit from a destination. We are a network carrier and we always look at the network contribution”, although surely it must be an issue even for Al Baker when a whole continent suffers from poor loads?
The BITRE statistics also revealed the loads of Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways to Australia are slipping. Emirates had an average load factor of 63.8% in June (down 7% year-on-year) to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, while it was 76% on its outbound flights (down 4.4%). Having said that, Emirates continues adding capacity to Australia, typically by upgrading B777 services to the A380.
Etihad’s flights to Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney from its Abu Dhabi hub were 56.6% full in June 2016, down a staggering 13.4% year-on-year, while average loads back to the Middle East were down 11.1% to 84.5%. Airfares to Australia are at an all-time low. Last month, Qantas Airways CEO, Alan Joyce, said it’s never been cheaper to visit the country.
