Qatar Airways will be the second airline to suspend its international operations from Nagpur after the government-run air carrier Air India, which suspended its Hyderabad-Nagpur-Bangkok flights an year back.
Qatar Airways, which has been operating a direct flights between Nagpur and Doha for the last two years, has decided to suspend the flight
from May 15 due to poor load factor from Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport here.
The full-service Qatar Airways launched its twice-weekly Doha flight from Nagpur in September 2007. Initially, the flight received a tremendous response from passengers as it was the only flight with connections to cities like London, Washington, New York and Paris from Nagpur. However, for the last few months the global economic slowdown and the poor load factor due to rising airfares have badly affected operations of the Nagpur flight, sources added.
As of now, we are only accepting bookings for the last flight that will depart from Nagpur on May 14. From May 15 onwards, passengers can book tickets for the flight from Mumbai, from where Qatar operates daily flights to Doha, he added.
Navin Chawla, regional manager for Qatar Airways, told TOI, "We are temporarily suspending the Doha-Nagpur-Doha operations from May 15, due to poor load factor. However, as soon as we get a demand from passengers the operations will start again."
However, another senior official said on condition of anonymity, "The flight was being operated with very poor load factor for the last few months. The airlines has incurred losses in lakhs and is planning to withdraw the Nagpur-Doha flights permanently."
Now, only Air Arabia and Air India Express are providing international connectivity to Sharjah and Dubai respectively from Nagpur.
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