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We’ve seen a lot of expansion and capacity increases from the major Middle Eastern carriers over the past year so it’s a little bit surprising to see Qatar Airways puling flights from one of its Australian destinations and Emirates reducing its services to and from Colombo during the norther hemisphere winter.
Qatar Airways Reducing Service To Adelaide
It was only in May of this year that Qatar Airways commenced daily service to Adelaide with its heralded Airbus A350 aircraft but it appears as if the airline is scaling back the route already.
Routes Online has reported that Qatar Airways plans to reduce its Doha – Adelaide service to a 5x/week service between 30 October and 25 March….but the service cut may be a lot more permanent than that.
From 30 October 2016 Qatar Airways will be removing the Tuesday and Saturday services from Doha to Adelaide and the Wednesday and Sunday services between Adelaide and Doha but, contrary to what Routes Online is suggesting, ExpertFlyer shows that the service has been cut all the way though to the end of the booking period (August 2017).
This is what the revised schedule will look like from 30 October:
QR914 DOH 21:05 – 17:35+1 day ADL (Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sun)
QR915 ADL 21:55 – 04:25+1 day DOH (Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri, Sat)
And here’s a screenshot from ExpertFlyer showing the reduced service still in effect in August 2017 (click to enlarge in new window):
The reason for the reduction is almost certainly due the airline wanting to open up more routes but not having enough aircraft to do it….so the airline is pulling aircraft from other routes so as to not slow down expansion too much.
Qatar Airways has been facing a shortage of aircraft for a number of months now and it has already lost a bit of face by having to postpone its much-trumpeted Doha – Auckland route to February 2017 – it would probably like to avoid any more such embarrassments in the future.
Emirates Changes To Colombo Services
Before anyone starts wondering why I’m posting about changes to Emirates flights to and from Colombo allow me explain why flights out of Colombo are so important.
Colombo has long been the starting point for fantastic premium cabin fares on any number of airlines so any changes to routes to/from Colombo have the potential to (a) affect those fares and (b) to affect the flight schedules of travelers already booked on those excellent fares…a lot of whom read this blog.
November Business Class fares between Colombo and London
Right, with that explanation out of the way here’s what Emirates is doing:
Between 6 January and 6 April Emirates is reducing the number of weekly non-stop flights between Dubai and Colombo from 27 to 20.
This is what the new schedule will look like with a few timing changes being put through too:
EK348 DXB 11:00 – 13:30 CMB (Daily 777 service)
EK648 DXB 14:20 – 20:20 CMB (Daily 777 service)
EK650 DXB 22:05 – 04:05+1 day CMB (Daily 777 service)
EK349 CMB 02:50 – 05:55 DXB (Daily 777 service)
EK651 CMB 05:35 – 08:40 DXB (Daily 777 service)
EK649 CMB 22:05 – 01:05+1 day DXB (Daily 777 service)
The flights being cut are EK654/EK655.
Note: the 1-stop service to Colombo via Male is not affected by any of these schedule changes
Singapore Service Also Cut
This is old news but probably bears repeating in these circumstances.
Emirates is withdrawing its daily non-stop 5th freedom flight between Colombo and Singapore for the same period that it’s reducing its service between Dubai and the Sri Lankan capital.
Between 6 January and 7 April the following service will no longer operate:
EK348 CMB 14:45 – 21:05 SIN
EK349 SIN 00:30 – 01:40 CMB
Bottom Line
Both sets of route changes will definitely affect existing customers as the booking windows have been open for months.
In the case of the Emirates schedule changes to/from Colombo, there probably won’t be too many people facing issues as the airline is still operating 3 daily non-stop flights from Dubai.
Travelers booked on the Qatar Airways flights to Adelaide that are now no longer going to be operating may have a slightly trickier time. There are no alternative non-stop Qatar Airlines flights to get them to Adelaide on the original arrival date so the sooner they get in contact with the airline to check their options the better.
The good news is that Qatar Airways has, historically, been very good at re-accommodating passengers on other airlines if that’s the best option for them.
I have a booking on EK349 Singapore-Colombo in January 2017 as part of a journey going MEL-SIN-CMB. We would rather not have to fly all the way via Dubai. Can I expect Emirates to be willing to transfer me to one of the other airlines that fly the route that I originally booked?
I don’t see why not. When Qatar Airways postponed their AKL-DOH service they were more than happy to route passengers on other airlines so Emirates should do the same with this cancellation.
It would be great if you could report back on here to let us know what Emirates offer you an how good they were at dealing with this situation – it would give us all a good data point for the future. Thanks.
Thans Ziggy. Honestly I don’t expect them to do anything extra for us but it would be a nice surprise if they offer us to fly on a different airline. After all they have sort of cheated us by selling tickets to a flight they won’t be operating. I’ll let you know how it goes.
[…] in the week Qatar Airways quietly reduced its service to Adelaide from a daily service to one that operates 5x/week and now it looks as if the airline is pulling […]