Qatar Airways to drop First Class on some flights 11, March 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.Tags: First Class, First class picture, Getting rid of first class, Qatar airways, Qatar Airways First Class
4 comments
It has been announced that Qatar Airways is eliminating First Class seats from some of its new airplane orders. Whilst First Class is, generally speaking, never an airline’s most profitable section, this is still a curious move.
Firstly, Qatar is, according to various GDP per capita figures, the richest country on earth. Ergo, presumably a reasonably high proportion of its citizens can pay for First Class. Secondly, Qatar is one of only six 5 star airlines in the world, for which one presumably needs to have a full range of classes. Moreover, more generally, given the wealth evident in Qatar and the feel and impression that one gets from the country as a whole and Qataris specifically, getting rid of First Class is simply really rather unexpected.
In purely financial terms, the decision makes more sense; Business Class is where the real money is at in international aviation. Also, I’d be exceedingly surprised if they got rid of First Class on, for example, Doha- London or Doha-New York routes.
Update:
It’s been kindly pointed out to me that in fact Qatar Airways haven’t had First Class on DOH-NYC/LON fights for some time now, and that the business section is just much bigger. I assumed that monied Qataris would ‘demand’ first class to such destinations. One learns something new every day…
The Gulf blog 