Flying high

Qatar Airways’ Akbar Al Baker on the opportunities created during a downturn.

For the CEO of Qatar Airways, February 9th was a day to rejoice. As the airline's first Boeing 777-200 long range aircraft landed in Doha, Akbar Al Baker celebrated yet another in a series of successes.

The arrival of the longest flying aircraft in the carrier's fleet will give the competition something to think about, believes Al Baker, and rightly so.

He is unfazed by the negative predictions for the global and regional aviation sectors. On the contrary, the chief executive has one word in mind: growth.

"The current rate of growth we envisage, will continue for at least the next four years because we are adding so many destinations and so much capacity," he says on the company's position in the market.

Qatar Airways, the flagship carrier airline of the State of Qatar, currently flies to 83 destinations worldwide, transporting passengers in its young fleet of 66 Airbus and Boeing aircraft.

With 80 Airbus A350s, 60 Boeing 787s and 32 Boeing 777s on order, Al Baker plans to run a fleet of 110 airplanes by 2013. The airline is also one of the customers of the twin-deck Airbus A380 ‘super jumbos' with five on order and scheduled for delivery from 2012.

Worldwide, airlines are struggling to fill aircraft as tourism and travel activities take a hit in a troubled economic environment. Figures issued by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) predict that in 2009 the global aviation industry could lose up to US$2.5 billion.

Regionally, the once booming aviation sector is also feeling the pinch of the financial downturn. IATA says Middle Eastern airlines will see losses up to US$200 million this year, with the main challenge being matching capacity to demand as fleets expand and traffic slows.

But none of this seems to worry Al Baker, who recently unveiled details of a new route to commence this year. Flights to Houston, Qatar Airways' third gateway into the US, after New York and Washington, are scheduled to start at the end of March. The route promises to be the longest in the world with a flight time of 17 hours and connecting trips to and from Kuwait.

Al Baker says his focus this year is "to grow" and "expand" Qatar Airways. He explains the airline will add approximately seven new destinations this year and will continue to receive, on average, one airplane each month until the year end.

"As far as Qatar Airways is concerned we are not going to slow down for a very simple reason; we deploy capacity in a very intelligent and very conservative way. In a nutshell, we are managing the crisis simply by moving capacity," says Al Baker.

This is the main reason why the carrier is "not affected as the other airlines" by the global crisis, believes Al Baker. "We are very prudent in the way we deploy our capacity, the way we have the flexibility of moving our capacity from market to market, where there is reduction in demand and where there is an increase in demand.

"In whichever crisis, you also always have an upside somewhere and we are very good at tapping these kind of upsides," he boasts.

Moreover, Al Baker says Qatar Airways is "lucky" in owning a fleet of different types of airplanes with varied configurations. The fleet comprises of Airbus 320s, Airbus 330s, planes with three class configurations, and others with two class configurations.

"We can always - where there is a drop in the premium cabin - just go with a two class configuration: business and economy.

"We also have a narrow body long range airplane, which allows us, when there's a load drop on our very long range sectors, to immediately go from a wide body to a narrow body. This explains why we have such flexibility," says Al Baker.

The airline presently flies to Europe, Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Far East and North America. New destinations will be announced two months prior to the launch, says Al Baker, explaining: "[This way] we do not give the opportunity for our competitors to know what we are doing," says Al Baker.

However, when the estimated four years of current-rate growth are over, the company will reach a plateau, predicts Al Baker. "After that our growth will stabilise to be in the region of around 10-11 percent a year," he says, adding: "This is because we'll be changing the configuration of our planes from narrow bodies to wide body, smaller than the sizes that are operated by the airline today, but with increased frequencies."

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