Qatar Airways has announced that it has increased flight frequencies, in time for the winter holiday season. Greater connectivity to Amsterdam, Bangkok, Barcelona, Belgrade and Miami, through the Hamad International Airport is now available for booking on www.qatarairways.com.
Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Officer, Engr. Badr Mohammed Al-Meer, said: “Qatar Airways is an airline that continually enhances its offerings to business and leisure travellers across the globe. The award-wining airline is proud to announce its expanded flight frequencies to its ever-growing network, and we look forward to seeing our passengers enjoy greater connectivity across the globe via our home hub, Hamad International Airport, starting this winter season.”
Qatar Airways network increases:
- Bangkok – from 35 weekly to 38 weekly, effective 15 December 2023.
- Amsterdam – from 10 weekly to 14 weekly, effective 16 December 2023.
- Belgrade – from 7 weekly to 10 weekly, effective 23 December 2023.
- Barcelona – from 18 weekly to 21 weekly, effective 01 January 2024.
- Miami – from 7 weekly to 10 weekly, effective 13 January 2024.
These extra flights should mean if you have been struggling to find Avios seats there could be some extras in the system now.
Heathrow’s major shareholder sells stake
Heathrow Airport’s major shareholder, Spanish infrastructure firm Ferrovial, has confirmed that it is selling off its 25% shareholding. The stake is worth £2.37 billion stake and has been sold to two different buyers; Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which will acquire a 10% shareholding, and French private equity company Ardian which will acquire 15% of the business. The company has been a major shareholder in Heathrow since 2006. At one point it had a 56% stake but has gradually been reducing its holding since 2012.
Since Covid, the airport has been making a loss, which seems odd since most parts of aviation have now returned to profit in the last year. It does feel like this has resulted in Heathrow making less effort than before and I do feel it has lost a lot of its former sparkle. The rules on tax-free shopping could well have had an impact too.
The completion of the sale and agreement is subject to regulatory conditions.
Ferrovial Airports CEO Luke Bugeja said: “Over the last 17 years, we have been contributing to Heathrow’s transformation, together with our fellow shareholders, achieving some excellent milestones throughout our long-term role as investor. These include overseeing an investment of £12 billion pounds, expanding its capacity with the construction of Terminal 2, and improving its operational performance. We are very pleased to have made Heathrow one of the world’s most connected airports and the busiest airport in Europe.”
Ferrovial still holds a 50% share in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports, a 60% in Dalaman Airport in Turkey and 49% in JFK Airport New Terminal.
8 comments
Talking of increased frequencies…
Qatar Airways has scheduled eight passenger flights on Doha to Heathrow return on Saturdays during the winter timetable, using slots leased from Air Mauritius. That’s a whopping 3,339 Qatar Airways seats in each direction. The other leased slots are for Friday and Sunday.
Air Mauritius chose to move its operations to Gatwick so it could operate a daily service, replacing the 5x weekly service to Heathrow. The other two slot pairs it was using were leased from Royal Brunei Airlines.
Just shows how incompetent British airways are for not tapping the market. They still aren’t flying direct to Bangkok or KL. Unsure why Malaysian also aren’t though.
BA seem to be glued to London airports. We used to have a service from LBA to LHR but they dropped that so, if I want to fly with them, I have to trail across the M62 to Manchester (horrible at the best of times) & then they can only get me to London. British Airways? More like London Airways!
Malaysia are operating twice daily LHR-KUL.
Always a great read so thanks for that, a question I never really find a simple answer to is I have 600,000 ba air miles never sure how to spend them with other one world airlines. Any chance of an article on this subject?
Many thanks
Hi Ron. It’s super simple. You just select Avios booking on ba.com and it will show all oneworld airlines available not just BA.
Thanks for the timely tip about Qatar’s increased flights Michele – I manage to bag two Avios business seats home from Bangkok in January.
That’s great news!
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