TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission which helps contribute to the running of the site – I’m very grateful to anyone who uses these links but their use is entirely optional. The compensation does not impact how and where products appear on this site and does not impact reviews that are published.
There have been a few new route announcements from Qatar Airways over the past few month including seasonal services to Pattaya and Chiang Mai as well as year round services to Penang. We’ve even seen service to Cardiff announced for May 2018.
Now there’s yet another new destination on the Qatar Airways route map as the airline follows British Airways with a new route to Greece.
From 27 March 2018 Qatar Airways will operate a 4x/week service between Doha and the Greek city of Thessaloniki on the following schedule:
QR205 DOH 07:40 – 12:50 SKG (Tue, Thu, Sat & Sun)
QR206 SKG 13:50 – 18:40 DOH (Tue, Thu, Sat & Sun)
These flights are already loaded into the reservations system and can be booked at QatarAirways.com.
The new route between Doha and Thessaloniki will be operated by an Airbus A320 aircraft which will offer:
- 12 seats in Business Class
- 132 seats in Economy Class
Image courtesy of SeatGuru.com (click to enlarge)
I’m not sure that Qatar Airways had all that much intention in offering this route 6 months ago but, ever since countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE stopped the airline flying in their airspace, Qatar Airways has had a lot of Airbus A320s sitting around idly – this is one way for the airline to use these aircraft.
Two Words Of Caution
If you’re looking around for good Qatar Airways Business Class deals between Europe and Asia and you find one out of Thessaloniki be aware of one important fact:
If you credit your flights to British Airways you won’t earn as many Tier Points for departures from Thessaloniki as you will from departures from most other European cities.
Thessaloniki and Athens are both closer to Doha than most of Qatar Airways’ other European destinations and, because of that proximity, the number of Tier Points earned on the Thessaloniki to Doha leg is just 40 – from most other European cities it’s 140.
For a round-trip itinerary between Europe and Asia that will see overall Tier Point earnings drop from 560 to just 360…and that’s a big hit.
The other thing to be on the lookout for are the nature of the Business Class seats.
This is a regional configuration that Qatar airways is using on this A320 and that may well mean that these flights do not offer lie-flat seats in the 12 person Business Class cabin.
If, as I strongly suspect, this is an A320 that was once used for short-haul flights between Qatar and its neighboring countries then the Business Class seats are likely to be recliners and decidedly unimpressive,
If I’m correct about this (and we’ll know more when the route launches) please don’t spend your hard-earned cash on seats like these unless you absolutely have to as they’re really not worth it.
Featured Image: Qatar Airways
