Qatar Airways’ ambitious plan to turn its home at Doha Hamad International Airport (DOH) into a major hub for the oneworld airline alliance has fallen into disarray after American Airlines confirmed it was permanently axing its non-stop route between Philadelphia and the Qatari capital.
The history of Qatar’s quest to get its fellow oneworld alliance member airlines to launch flights from their respective hub to Doha can be traced back to 2022, when the airline was trying to rapidly expand its route network as the world emerged from the doldrums of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unfortunately, at the same time, Qatar Airways was involved in a nasty legal spat with aircraft manufacturer Airbus over a paint defect that was affecting dozens of its state-of-the-art A350 aircraft.
The airline was grounding these planes for months on end, lost a massive order for Airbus A321 as the spat dragged on, and then learned that its order for the next-generation Boeing 777X would continue to be delayed for at least several more years due to certification woes.
Simply put, Qatar’s expansion plans were being severely held back by a lack of available aircraft. However, the airline had a plan to get around this problem.
By offering financial incentives to oneworld alliance partners, it could get them to operate flights to Doha from their respective hubs and feed passengers into its own route network.
Until only recently, the plan had been largely successful. American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia, Finnair, and Japan Airlines all launched flights to Doha in quick succession around 2023.
These flights were never intended for point-to-point traffic, but to feed passengers onto connecting services with Qatar Airways. And without the incentives that Qatar Airways was offering, it’s unlikely that these airlines would have seen the business case for launching these flights.
In the case of American Airlines’ flight from New York JFK to Doha, which then switched to Philadelphia, it was widely reported that the carrier had no issue filling seats in Economy Class; they were relatively low-yield, and premium cabins were a harder sell.
American Airlines suspended its Philadelphia to Doha route at the outset of the U.S. and Israeli military action against Iran at the end of February, and while it initially looked like the carrier would return to Doha early next year, that’s no longer the case.
The airline has confirmed that it is permanently suspending the route, while Qatar Airways is planning to start its own route between Philadelphia and Doha at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Given that the ongoing security situation in the Middle East is likely to suppress travel demand through the region for some time, Qatar Airways no doubt doesn’t have an issue with aircraft availability for the foreseeable future, and passengers will probably view the change as an upgrade on the service that American Airlines offered.
Not that Qatar’s oneworld hub experiment is completely over. While British Airways, Iberia, Finnair, and Japan Airlines still haven’t returned to Doha, all four of these airlines plan to resume their services at some point this year.
You have to wonder whether Qatar Airways was willing to lose the American Airlines flight from Philadelphia and take over the route itself because the Texas-based carrier has been so incredibly cautious about resuming flights to the Middle East.
For context, American Airlines hasn’t flown to Tel Aviv since October 2023 and doesn’t plan to resume flights to Israel until early next year at the absolute earliest.
Given that background, Qatar Airways may not have been willing to lose its link to Philadelphia for such an extended period of time, so it took matters into its own hands.
