Doha to Dubai is arguably one of the world’s most exciting routes – or at least was before
the blockade started. While a very short route, it had 33 daily departures with nine widebody
types used – including the A380. And the glory days of the route will no doubt return.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Doha to Dubai International doesn’t sound an exciting route. If
you’re looking at flights now, you’d be correct. There were just three departures on Sunday,
May 9th. Two were with Qatar Airways and one with flydubai – with Qatar Airways using both the
777-300ER and 777-200LR on the 235-mile service. This gives a suggestion of the former glory of the
route which had up to 33 departures a day with numerous widebodies. This was before the 2017
blockade was imposed. It was – and will be once again – a highly interesting
route because of these factors: The number of aircraft types used
The prevalence of widebodies A High frequency of flights
And An extremely short length of less than an hour,
It was in June 2017 that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar.
This resulted in a blockade that severed links – including air service – between
Qatar and those countries. This meant flights to and from Doha often required lengthy detours
that significantly added to flight duration, fuel burn, and ultimately, competitiveness.The
blockade ended nearly three years later in January 2021, after which flights have
slowly started to return – except to Bahrain. On the randomly chosen day of January 5th,
2017, there were some 33 departures from Doha to Dubai International with Emirates, flydubai,
and Qatar Airways. Widebodies had just over half the flights spread across nine types,
including the A380 with Emirates and the A340-600 with Qatar Airways.
Dubai has always been very popular for citizens and residents of Qatar, with Hotelier Middle East
saying that “before the rift, Qatari overnight visitors formed a key part of Dubai’s tourism
industry”.In full-month January 2017, an estimated 390,000 round-trip passengers flew between Doha
and Dubai International. Of these, approximately 211,000 passengers – 54% – were point-to-point.
This means Doha-Dubai saw over 3,400 P2P passengers daily, each way.
The rest were in transit. On our sample January-2017-day,
Dubai International was Doha’s number-one non-stop route out of the 139 in its network.
It had more than twice as many departures as number-two, Bahrain. Meanwhile, Doha was
Dubai’s top route as well, this time out of 186. Qatar Airways had 17 of these 33 departures,
as shown here, with eight types used, including the A320 on seven flights and the A319 on two.
With so many different aircraft used, Doha to Dubai
is probably the best example of right-sizing aircraft to demand.
Hopefully, when the industry recovers we’ll see the same exciting activity that we saw before.
Have you ever flown between Doha and Dubai? What do you think of this diversity of aircraft and
impressive frequency? Share your thoughts in the comments.