Qatar Airways Replaces American Airlines With 3rd New York JFK Boeing 777 Service

Thanks to American ending New York JFK to Doha, Qatar Airways has added a third daily service on the airport pair. It is because American has shifted its Doha operation to Philadelphia. When writing, there is no indication that Qatar Airways will end its own Philly service, but this may change.

Qatar Airways returns JFK to triple daily

Launching on October 30th will be the Middle East airline’s third daily JFK service, shortly after American ends it. This was revealed late last week, but I have been away and therefore have not covered it sooner. The new outbound time from Doha (at 01:25) corresponds closely to American’s 01:35 departure. It is different inbound.

Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying.

Qatar Airways JFK winter operation is as follows, with all times local. The additional frequency means that it does not have to overnight an aircraft in New York, as QR705 presently stays for half a day to operate QR704 the following morning. Instead, the Boeing 777-300ER aircraft operating QR705 will return as QR706.

Analyzing Qatar Airways’ JFK schedule using Cirium shows that it is not a stranger to triple daily service. It had that many flights on 152 days during the pandemic, most recently in June 2022, the month American launched the 6,704-mile (10,789 km) route.

127 weekly US, Canada passenger flights

When Qatar Airways and fellow oneworld member American are combined, they have 127 weekly departures between Doha and the US/Canada this coming winter on a network of 13 airport pairs, as shown on the map. While 127 weekly is not quite a record, it is nonetheless significant.

Funnily enough, it is the same frequency as Emirates, United, and Air Canada have from Dubai, although the trio has more seats for sale from larger gauge aircraft. Still, if non-stop flights are considered, Doha has more, as Emirates continues to have daily service to JFK via Milan and Newark via Athens.

Image: GCMap.

Qatar Airways and American’s network is as follows. The only Canadian airport served is Montreal, presumably due to the Canada-Qatar bilateral air service agreement, which dictates market access. Until July 2023, Emirates did not serve Montreal from Dubai but launched it following the loosening of the Canada-UAE bilateral. Qatar Airways previously benefited from less Middle East competition in Quebec.

The first five months of 2023

According to the US DOT T-100 data, Qatar Airways and American carried 1,232,829 roundtrip passengers between the US and Doha from January to May this year. With 1,417,751 seats for sale, they had a collective seat load factor of 87%.

Photo: Suparat Chairatprasert I Shutterstock.

While SLF is only one part of the airline route performance puzzle, it is nonetheless interesting. A very high SLF does not automatically mean solid overall performance. In May, the top markets by SLF were as follows, again using T-100 data:

1. Washington Dulles: 96.1% SLF
2. Boston: 96.0%
3. Dallas Fort Worth: 95.2%
4. Chicago O’Hare: 95.0%
5. Seattle: 93.8%
6. Houston Intercontinental: 92.3%
7. Philadelphia: 91.7%
8. Los Angeles: 91.1%
9. Atlanta: 90.3%
10. San Francisco: 90.0%
11. Miami: 88.5%
12. JFK: 75.6% (dragged down by Qatar Airways’ 70.5%)

Where else would you like Qatar Airways to serve in the US or Canada? Let us know in the comments.

Sources of information: OAG, Flightradar24, US DOT T-100.