Africa-Press – Botswana. Qatar Airways will restart Windhoek, Namibia, in June – its 31st African city. Its seats to the continent are up by 82% versus pre-pandemic.
Qatar Airways’ return to the tourist-driven destination of Namibia comes soon after inaugurating Kano (KAN) and Port Harcourt (PHC) in Nigeria.
Might Gaborone, in Botswana, also return this year? In 2021, Hendrik Du Preez, Qatar Airways’ Vice-President for Africa, said it would be likely. He also said Windhoek was probable, and it is happening.
What’s happening?
Qatar Airways will reintroduce Windhoek on June 25th. There will be 3x weekly flights using 254-seat B787-8s, the carrier’s aircraft of choice for Africa, with 22 business seats and 232 in economy. Windhoek’s schedule is as follows, with all times local. It is, as always, designed for connectivity:
Doha-Windhoek: QR1373, 01:45-09:50
Windhoek-Doha: QR1374, 13:20-23:00
Qatar Airways launched Namibia in September 2016 and it remained until 2020. It variously used A330-200s and B787-8s and has always been a terminator service: it didn’t go anywhere else. According to OAG, it started at 4x weekly and gradually rose to 1x daily by the peak of 2018. However, this was excessive, and it reduced to 5x weekly the next summer.
In 2019, Qatar Airways carried more Windhoek passengers to/from Germany than any other country. That’s not surprising: Namibia was a German colony and far more Germans visit than any other European nationality. Eurowings Discover will serve Windhoek 1x daily from Frankfurt this year.
However, booking data shows that Paris CDG was Qatar’s largest origin and destination in 2019, followed by Zurich, Frankfurt, Munich, Milan Malpensa, Helsinki, Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen, Moscow Domodedovo, Brussels, and Geneva. Over seven in ten Windhoek passengers transferred over Doha.
An enormous focus on Africa
It’s hard to comprehend the speed with which Qatar Airways has grown in Africa since the pandemic. The renewed importance of the continent to the carrier is immediately clear to see in the figure below.
According to OAG data, the airline has virtually four million Africa seats for sale this year. That’s up by a whopping 82% over summer 2019 (S19), when it had 2.2 million.
One in every six seats
Africa now represents nearly one in every six seats for sale by Qatar Airways; a significant change from S19. It’s hugely more than for Turkish Airlines (one in every 14) and more than Emirates (one in eight).
Turkish Airlines, in contrast, has only about 250,000 more Africa seats this summer, despite its 53-strong network, which now includes Durban and Juba. Turkish wins on frequency from lots of narrowbodies; Qatar on seats from larger aircraft.
A 31-strong Africa network
The Qatar flag carrier’s Africa network has risen to 31. KAN and PHC took off at the start of March 2022, while Abidjan (ABJ), Abuja (ABV), Accra (ACC), Harare (HRE), Luanda (LAD), Lusaka (LUN), and Sharm El Sheikh (SSH) were all added since the pandemic started.
Following the end of the blockade, they were joined by the return of Alexandria (HBE), Cairo (CAI), and Luxor (LXR). Qatar Airways also reintroduced Khartoum (KRT), which it ceased serving in early 2019 because of the boycott imposed by Saudi Arabia and others that resulted in significantly longer routings to reach Sudan.
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