Route cancelled after less than a year due to poor profit margins

The direct flight between Toulouse and Doha, the capital of Qatar, will make its final voyage on September 29, less than a year after launching, despite often selling more than 75% of tickets for each flight.

The commercial director of Toulouse-Blagnac airport Bruno Balerdi said “an economic equilibrium is yet to be found” for the route operator, who believes the service does not make enough money.

The route, managed by Qatar Airways, currently runs three times per week, and was launched on July 18, 2023.

Since its introduction, more than 60,000 passengers have flown the route, which is often used by people taking a connecting flight from Doha to elsewhere.

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Profit margins ‘too low’ to maintain service

Despite usually selling between 75% and 80% of tickets, the aircraft that runs the route – a 305-seat Airbus A330-300 – was deemed as too big for the service by Qatar Airways. 

The airline began running the route using an Airbus A330-200 (a 225-seater aircraft) but was forced to change to the bigger plane soon after. 

“We’ve been in discussions with the airline for several weeks, in particular to bring a smaller aircraft on line to make the route more profitable. Unfortunately, no aircraft meeting these criteria is currently available in its fleet,” said Mr Balerdi. 

In addition, the per-seat profit margin was low, in order to attract customers, but this required more tickets to be sold to keep the service viable. 

A lack of business-class ticket sales – of which 30 were available per-flight – was also highlighted, as well as poor returns on cargo transportation by the aircraft. 

It is unknown whether the route will reopen once a smaller aircraft has been found. Toulouse-Blagnac is trying to increase the number of long-haul international flights on its rota, including a recently added direct flight to Montréal. 

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