Qatar Airways made the big announcement on their Twitter page earlier this morning. They’ll be using a B777 on the route to Doha and Philadelphia will be Qatar’s 5th US gateway. With the pending AA/US merger and Qatar’s anticipated October/November entry into oneWorld, the PHL selection seems to make sense.
Qatar Airways is currently a oneworld member designate, meaning that within the next 6-12 months you should be able to redeem American AAdvantage or other oneworld carrier miles for this flight. If availability is as generous as it was during the Continental(UA)/Qatar partnership, this could be a pretty sweet (and reasonable) redemption opportunity…
Related – see Qatar to Launch Direct JFK – Athens Service
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9 comments
I highly doubt that the merger had anything to do with that announcement. The planning time to open a new city are longer.
Of course the AA/US merger drives this. PHL doesn’t make any sense at all without the US traffic feed at PHL. If it makes sense at all, which I’m not sure.
Dallas, Atlanta and Boston coming soon
It helps but I don’t think it is the driver. As I said the planning takes longer than a few months since merger was announced. Plus remember it was BA promoting Qatar into OW not AA. If it was for the feed, they would have started with MIA connecting all the South America traffic, even DFW.
I think PHL has a good catchment area, that can survive by itself.
By the end of 2014 all of the big three and probably TK will have 4 to 5 destinations on the east coast.
is this a 2cabin plane?
I’m surprised that Etihad & Qatar don’t yet fly to West Coast (SFO & LAX) like Emirates does
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