Qatar Airways to stop its direct Toulouse-Doha flight: Report

Published: 14 July 2024

NT Bureau
Doha

The direct flight between Toulouse and Doha will make its final voyage on September 29, less than a year after launching, despite often selling more than 75% of tickets for each flight, French media have reported.

The commercial director of Toulouse-Blagnac airport Bruno Balerdi said “an economic equilibrium is yet to be found” for the route operator, who believes the service does not make enough money.

The route, managed by Qatar Airways, currently runs three times per week, and was launched on July 18, 2023.

Since its introduction, more than 60,000 passengers have flown the route, which is often used by people taking a connecting flight from Doha to elsewhere, reports said.

Despite usually selling between 75% and 80% of tickets, the aircraft that runs the route – a 305-seat Airbus A330-300 – was deemed as too big for the service by Qatar Airways. 

The airline began running the route using an Airbus A330-200 (a 225-seater aircraft) but was forced to change to the bigger plane soon after. 

“We’ve been in discussions with the airline for several weeks, in particular to bring a smaller aircraft on line to make the route more profitable. Unfortunately, no aircraft meeting these criteria is currently available in its fleet,” said Balerdi. 

In addition, the per-seat profit margin was low, in order to attract customers, but this required more tickets to be sold to keep the service viable.