I was also told this this afternoon. The CWL based ground staff that were employed directly by Qatar were called to a meeting and told the service is ending and they are being made redundant at the end of the month. The person who told me this is an ex colleague of mine who worked with me for a few years but left to work for Qatar.
 
Really disappointing especially for the people losing their jobs. Hopefully the service will come back in the future.
The 'like' is for the second sentence in your post, Jerry. I suspect that 2021, although hopefully will eventually turn out to be far better than 2020, will still throw up disappointments at every airport.

When things settle down perhaps in 2022 a lot of axed and reduced routes everywhere will return. There is no official confirmation that the CWL-DOH route has been removed as far as I understand. If it has there is every reason to believe it will return when the world and aviation returns to normal. After all, if the Qatar management thought it viable when the route began why would it not be when normality returns?
 
The 'like' is for the second sentence in your post, Jerry. I suspect that 2021, although hopefully will eventually turn out to be far better than 2020, will still throw up disappointments at every airport.

When things settle down perhaps in 2022 a lot of axed and reduced routes everywhere will return. There is no official confirmation that the CWL-DOH route has been removed as far as I understand. If it has there is every reason to believe it will return when the world and aviation returns to normal. After all, if the Qatar management thought it viable when the route began why would it not be when normality returns?
The airport has essentially had a reset. Sadly some routes may not be viable for a while. Unfortunately many people will use the loss of the route as a political stick to beat the airport with. No doubt there'll be cries of failure and it's a waste of money and maybe even questions asked in the Senedd.
Very interesting social media reaction amongst the more avgeek side. Kind of 'i knew this would fail' reaction by a few people i follow.
 
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I wonder if Saudi reopening the borders is a possible reason for the ending of the CWL service (which is still onsale)? Qatar may need the 788s to operate any resumed Middle East regional service. If so it could mean a potential return in the future and possibly more 788 routes/flights being scrapped at other airports.
 
The decision to reopen airspace was only formally agreed in the past 2 days. QR has plenty of aircraft but has to cut unprofitable routes. It is pure economics which has led to the loss of this route.
 
The decision to reopen airspace was only formally agreed in the past 2 days. QR has plenty of aircraft but has to cut unprofitable routes. It is pure economics which has led to the loss of this route.
Then i wouldn't be surprised if Cardiff wasn't the only route to be culled. Also begs the question that if the WG had control of APD if cutting that could save the service for the future. Guess we'll never know. It's still onsale by the way.
 
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QR were opening many routes to potentially low demand Airports over the past few years. Probably to gain momentum throughout the world to help grow in size. Back then they had money to burn, but its likely with covid that is no longer a luxury for a cash rich Airline/owners.
 
A poster on the dried fruit forum is saying that his/her sources say that Qatar won't restart until 2022 if they return. How accurate that is I don't know but to me does sound a realistic time frame.
 
When Qatar set up the CWL route their CEO clearly regarded the West Country as an important source of passengers, having said that CWL has a catchment of over six million people. Slightly at odds with this was his (undoubtedly true) contention that one of the reasons they did not choose BRS was the fact that too many West Country people regard LHR as their long-haul airport of choice and use it. Research has shown that 7-8 million passenger journeys each year that involve an origin or final destination in South West England are made via the London airports, mainly LHR.

I imagine that a significant number of these South West England passengers use the the MEB3 (Qatar, Emirates and Etihad). If Qatar could capture some of those for CWL, especially those who use Emirates and Etihad which would not dilute Qatar's own LHR services, it would obviously improve the viability of the CWL route, perhaps critically so.

I wonder how many Qatar passengers from/to the West Country have used the CWL route and how this compares with the airline's research projections prior to the commencement of the route.
 
I wonder how many Qatar passengers from/to the West Country have used the CWL route and how this compares with the airline's research projections prior to the commencement of the route.
If I remember correctly the airport said that i think it was 52% of the passengers were UK originating and that 18% of them were from England. So potentially in 2019 that's 8370 passengers.
 
I know some years ago when ZOOM decided to begin flights from CWL, they looked on their data base, and were surprised to find the number of their passengers at Gatwick, who originated from the South Wales area, so they decided to open routes from CWL. It would be interesting to see how many passengers from the West Country used their services.
 
If I remember correctly the airport said that i think it was 52% of the passengers were UK originating and that 18% of them were from England. So potentially in 2019 that's 8370 passengers.
I know some years ago when ZOOM decided to begin flights from CWL, they looked on their data base, and were surprised to find the number of their passengers at Gatwick, who originated from the South Wales area, so they decided to open routes from CWL. It would be interesting to see how many passengers from the West Country used their services.
I know some people from the Bristol area who used the CWL Zoom services.

Some also undoubtedly use the CWL Qatar service and Jerry has come up with some figures. What we don't know is the sort of percentage the Qatar management was factoring in when they set up the route. 18% doesn't seem a bad figure if the majority of 'English' passengers came from an area that Qatar thought would not use their own local airport in sufficient numbers.
 
With the possible ending of Qatar flights from Cardiff, does anyone think there could be an opportunity for Turkish to come on board. Do they have a hub in Istanbul ? Also not forgetting the short break brigade, just a thought.
 
Turkish Airlines have grown hugely in the last few years,they could be a possibility.
Hopefully Qatar are just putting back restart until next year.
 
I'd be surprised if Turkish didn't launch either BRS or CWL in the coming years, especially if Qatar delay any potential return.

I do think a lot of routes globally will be "cancelled" this year, only to make a return in 2022. The fact Qatar are hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup should help some of their routes to come back.
 

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