Croatian Aviation reports that Qatar Airways has updated its flight schedule on the Doha – Zagreb – Doha route. The airline has further reduced the number of weekly flights on its only route to Croatia.
Namely, Qatar Airways has made changes to its flight schedule for the rest of the winter and the start of the regular flight schedule.
This airline had announced an increase in the number of weekly flights to Zagreb during the Christmas and New Year holidays, launching the second weekly flight on this route. Due to weak demand, they were not realized, so they continue to operate on the Zagreb line only once a week, every Friday.
Qatar Airways currently does not have the capacity to fill its smallest aircraft in the fleet (A320) to Zagreb, all due to the impact of the global pandemic and passenger restrictions between countries.
Until a few days ago, the airline offered two daily flights to Zagreb from the end of March, which is actually the schedule that existed before the global pandemic and has not changed so far.
These two daily flights are no longer available for booking on the airline’s website. Instead of twice a day, the airline plans to operate twice a week (Tuesdays and Saturdays) between Zagreb and Doha, from the end of March to the end of May 2021.
As of June, two daily flights are available. Still, it is expected that the airline will withdraw these flights from sale in the coming weeks and reduce the frequency to two to three flights a week, depending on the epidemiological situation and the demand itself.
In January and February 2020, before the outbreak of the global pandemic, Qatar Airways flew to Zagreb twice a day on A320 aircraft and offered over 31,000 seats between Doha and Zagreb in those two months. In January and February this year, Qatar is offering just one weekly flight (Fridays) for a total of just over 2,100 seats. This is a drastic reduction in the available seats on this line by as much as 93%.
The small number of weekly Qatar Airways flights is not a surprise – the line to Zagreb has been used by many tourists from all over Asia, Australia, and Oceania. There are almost no such passengers in Croatia since the outbreak of the pandemic. The line from Zagreb is also used by a large number of Slovenian citizens who do not have a direct line from Qatar Airways from Ljubljana. Still, at the moment, Slovenian citizens also do not travel in large numbers, so we will have to wait for a slightly larger number of weekly flights.
In February 2020, Qatar Airways planned to increase capacity on its afternoon flights to Zagreb and operate a B787-8 wide-body aircraft (254 instead of 132 seats) instead of the narrow-body A320, but this did not happen due to the global pandemic.
Before the pandemic, the airline also announced the introduction of the seasonal line Doha – Dubrovnik – Doha, which is currently not on sale for the summer flight schedule in 2021.
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