Qatar Airways expansion into Iran
In a move that few saw coming, it was announced this week that Qatar Airways had been granted 9th freedom permissions to fly domestic air routes within Iran. Iran – it seems – has found a silver bullet to its domestic air travel woes and Qatar Airways have blown the doors off a new market. At this stage little is known about these future domestic operations. What is clear from Qatar Airways’ announced schedule changes is that they have grand plans for Iran.
So far the following changes are set to take effect:
| Route | Flight Changes | Effective Date |
|---|---|---|
| Doha (DOH) – Tehran (IKA) | 2 daily to 3 daily flights | December 1 2011 |
| Doha (DOH) – Mashad (MHD) | 5 weekly to 2 daily | March 1 2012 |
| Doha (DOH) – Shiraz (SYZ) | 2 weekly to daily | December 1 2011 |
| Doha (DOH) – Shiraz (SYZ) | daily to 10 weekly | March 1 2012 |
| Doha (DOH) – Isfahan (IFN) | new daily route | January 11 2012 |
Qatar Airways themselves are billing this as a 150% capacity increase into Iran – massive no matter how you spin it. While we wait to see what comes of the domestic operations we can say that Doha has become to Iran what Incheon has become Japan – a domestic hub overseas.
