Middle East diplomatic spat slams busy Qatar hub
Air travelers are likely to feel the fallout of a diplomatic dispute between the nation of Qatar and its neighbors in the Middle East.
Flights through the busy Doha airport — the main hub for fastgrowing Qatar Airways — have been disrupted by the spat, which has seen at least four Middle East nations cut diplomatic ties to Qatar.
That has shut off Qatar’s land border and has closed significant amounts of air space for airlines flying from Qatar, a development that’s sure to affect schedules for Qatar Airways and other airlines operating there.
Doha’s new Hamad International Airport opened in 2014. Buoyed by the ambitious growth plans of state-owned Qatar Airways, the facility has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing international air hubs.
Already, airlines from countries suspending ties with Qatar have halted service to the nation. They include major global carriers Emirates and Etihad. Similarly, Qatar Airways had suspended all of its flights to Saudi Arabia and presumably would soon do the same to the other nations cutting diplomatic ties with it (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt).
What remains to be seen is how severely flights to other nations might be affected. With airspace to several neighboring countries now closed, schedules for flights operating to or from Qatar could be disrupted depending on how they’re rerouted. It also introduced a major competitive hurdle for the carrier.
“If a journey to Europe that used to take six hours now takes eight or nine because it has had to change routes, then that makes it far less appealing and passengers might look elsewhere,” Ghanem Nuseibeh, director at advisory firm Cornerstone Global, told the BBC.
Qatar Airways has achieved great growth during the past decade by exploiting the location of its Doha hub to funnel connecting passengers traveling from Europe and the Americas to destinations in Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Qatar Airways currently flies from 10 U.S. destinations to its Doha hub.