Qatar Airways will commence daily flights to Adelaide from next year. And as an added bonus, the flights will be operated by Qatar’s newest state-of-the-art aircraft, the Airbus A350-900.
Qatar will be the second airline to offer direct flights between Adelaide and the Middle East, with Emirates already flying daily to Dubai. Both airlines will soon offer a one-stop option from Adelaide to many destinations in Europe via the Middle East.
As is often the case when a new route is launched, there appears to be a generous amount of award availability for those looking to use their frequent flyer points to fly on the new route. This is good news for Qantas frequent flyers. Qantas points can be used to book a seat as Qatar is a Qantas partner through the oneworld alliance.
I could already see 4 award seats in J on the route using the Avios engine a couple of days back…
Qatar Airways is renowned for being a premium airline with a very good Business class product, so Qantas members looking to use their points for a Business Class seat on the route are unlikely to be disappointed.
The announcement of the new flights between Doha and the South Australian capital, which begin on 2 May 2015, came as a great surprise to many. Qatar only recently announced new flights to Sydney, its third Australian destination.
Shock & awe. I wasn’t expecting QR to be coming to ADL and in the A350-900 but very glad that they are!
With numerous oneworld airlines now offering international flights from Adelaide, some suggest it might be time that an international Business lounge is built at Adelaide Airport. The domestic Qantas Club is currently the only lounge serving passengers on almost all international flights departing from Adelaide. And according to one member, there is even space for a new lounge available.
There’s room – Next to the Singapore Airlines lounge downstairs is two large spaces which are vacant, they were intended to be a Qantas Business Lounge and a Malaysian Airlines Lounge, but they were never fitted out.
Prior to the announcement of Qatar’s Sydney services several weeks ago, the air services agreement governing flights between Australia and Qatar restricted the airline to operating only 14 return services to Australia per week. Qatar had been using this allocation to fly to Perth and Melbourne daily. A recent increase allowed for an extra seven services per week, which Qatar quickly used to start the flights to Sydney. Since then there has been no change to the agreement, however there is nothing preventing international airlines from flying to “secondary” cities including Adelaide, Cairns, the Gold Coast and Darwin. Only Australia’s four major international gateways – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – are restricted.
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