Qatar Airways
will more than double its South American presence with two brand-new cities—Bogotá and Caracas—joining its map. It currently flies to São Paulo, although it flew to Buenos Aires (via São Paulo) until 2020. The announcement of the Colombian and Venezuelan capitals came a month after the oneworld carrier applied for permission to begin service.

Qatar Airways to Bogotá and Caracas

The airline will operate Doha-Bogotá-Caracas-Doha aboard the 276-seat Boeing 777-200LR. In an unusual move for the carrier, it will be served twice-weekly, perhaps indicating this development’s political nature. The schedule is currently unknown. It comes soon after Emirates launched a daily Dubai-Miami-Bogota service.

Image: GCMap

The stop in Venezuela en route to Doha will help overcome Bogotá’s high elevation, significantly impacting take-off performance on such long trips, especially with a heavy payload.

The stop en route to Caracas might help with the safety situation in Venezuela, where airline crews often avoid staying. Qatar Airways may schedule more crew so that it can fly Bogotá-Caracas-Doha in one go.

Photo: Thiago B Trevisan I Shutterstock

As discussed later, the Doha-Bogotá segment will become Qatar Airways’ third-longest non-stop service. It will also be the first time Colombia has had non-stop flights from the Middle East (but not to it).

While Venezuela has had Conviasa flights to Damascus and Tehran and Iran Air flew to Caracas in 2007, the country has never had Middle Eastern service by a major global operator. (Turkish Airlines serves Caracas (and Bogotá) from its Istanbul Airport hub on the European side of the city.)

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Wait a minute: what’s the demand?

Almost nobody flies between Doha and Bogotá/Caracas—barely 2,000 passengers a year (five daily). Of course, that misses the point. As always, Qatar Airways will revolve around transit passengers over its Doha hub.

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Potential markets include the following, although the degree to which it can penetrate them will depend on its schedule and pricing. It may rely more on the Middle East and South Asia. As there will only be two roundtrip flights each week, filling them should not be a problem.

• Bogotá-Dubai: 20,000 roundtrip passengers (Emirates serves Bogotá)
• Bogotá-Shanghai: 12,000
• Caracas-Beirut: 10,000
• Caracas-Guangzhou: 8,000 (Conviasa serves Guangzhou via Moscow)
• Caracas-Dubai: 5,000
• Caracas-Tehran: 3,000
• Bogotá-Delhi: 3,000
• Bogotá-Abu Dhabi: 3,000
• Bogotá-Mumbai: 2,000
• Bogotá-Karachi: 2,000
• Bogotá-Kochi: 1,500

Qatar Airways’ longest non-stop routes

The following table shows them. Doha-Bogotá has pushed Doha-San Francisco to the fourth spot and Doha-Dallas/Fort Worth out of the top five. Meanwhile, Caracas back to Doha will become Qatar Airways’ 10th longest non-stop segment, meaning Doha to Atlanta is no longer in the top 10.

In December, Qatar Airways will resume Canberra flights. They will stop in Melbourne, replacing Adelaide. However, it is not featured because the table only includes non-stop links.