Regional Round-Up
Gulf juggernaut gains momentum with US$32 billion airport expansion
October 1st 2014
The arrival of Qatar Airways’ first A380 at the airline’s Doha headquarters last month gave the carrier’s chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, the opportunity to be gracious about his client, and he took it. Qatar had rejected the first three of its 10-plane A380 order but said the delay was not the fault of Airbus. “The delay was caused by us because we demanded additional quality,” Al Baker said. Read More »
He added that “there is a possibility we will buy more because the airline’s network could accommodate 20 to 25 of the airliners”, especially if Airbus follows the urging of Emirates Airline and develops a NEO version. Qatar will initially use the A380s from Doha to London Heathrow and Paris, but like its airline neighbor, Emirates, winning slots for the aircraft in key markets such as China and India remain difficult. Recently, Lufthansa, another A380 customer, outbid Emirates for a slot at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
At Emirates, A380 services to Chicago commenced in August, the Dubai carrier’s ninth destination in the U.S. with plans to place A380s on five of these routes from December. The carrier’s global ambitions will be very well served by the September announcement that the emirate’s government will invest US$32 billion in the expansion of the Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Centre (DWC). The expansion program envisages catering for 120 million passengers a year by 2022 and 220 million ten years later. Asia-Pacific carriers will be competitively effected by the DWC expansion as two thirds of the global population lives within eight hours flying distance from Dubai. However, DWC faces some competition in the Gulf itself. Abu Dhabi International Airport is expanding to handle a projected 40 million passengers annually and Doha’s new US$15.5 billion Hamad International Airport can process 29 million travelers annually and has forward plans for expansion.
