Qatar Airways CEO Discusses New Business Class, Future Of A380s And Oneworld Alliance

27.08.2023 - 10:43 / forbes.com / Akbar Al-Baker

Qatar Airways is no stranger to glamorous inflight experiences and sometimes flashy media headlines. The Oneworld alliance member is a growing global carrier that is upending what travelers should expect from an airline. The carrier’s vision comes from its CEO, Akbar Al Baker, who is responsible for taking this once-small carrier to the global stage.

As the current chairman for the Oneworld alliance himself, Al Baker sits down to explain his post-pandemic goals for the airline and what he sees as both obstacles and opportunities as the world travels again.

It’s restarting from zero. Fortunately, we didn’t listen to everybody else and ground planes while shutting the doors on our staff. This helped to elevate the Qatar Airways brand and allowed the airline to restart more quickly when needed. People that we helped to repatriate had never traveled on Qatar Airways. Many thought there were only one airline in the Middle East during that time, and they discovered that there was another carrier available when they were abandoned by their favorite airlines that slowed operations.

This led to Qatar Airways having a higher profile in the industry. For two consecutive years during the pandemic, Qatar Airways was the largest international airline in the world based on passengers flown. In addition, during this time, Qatar Airways utilized its planes in a great way by becoming stronger in the cargo sector. Before the pandemic, the airline was number two in the region for cargo, and it then became the number one carrier for cargo.

When the pandemic began to subside and carriers needed to ramp up quickly, air carriers that let people go had trouble restarting quickly. This was a big mistake, and this is the reason why aircraft deliveries are delayed. Even if those planes are delivered, they are delayed due to lack of available staff or available spare parts. It’s like a chicken and egg cycle.

The airline, of course, had to ground some planes and close certain stations, but we continued to fly extensively. It was the only airline that continued to fly at such a strong level, but then quickly began to grow again and add new destinations that were not in the pre-pandemic network. These include Lyon and Toulouse, France; Trabzon, Turkey; Juba, South Sudan; and Chittagong, Bangladesh.

This is not about starting new routes just yet. For now, this is about adding frequency to routes where the airline had curtailed during the pandemic. They will also address the shortage of aircraft the carrier is facing. Qatar has narrowbody Airbus planes that the MAX was going to replace, but due to other aircraft delays, we will keep them. The MAX will only help increase frequencies. The narrowbody Airbus planes for Qatar will remain