Qatar Airways ferries four B777s to Brisbane

By Andrew Curran.

Qatar Airways ferried four aircraft to Brisbane (BNE) over the weekend as hostilities in the Gulf region continue to impact the airline’s operations. Two B777-300ERs flew in from Perth (PER) and one each from Melbourne (MEL) and Sydney (SYD).

ADS-B flight tracking data shows A7-BEM (msn 64088) and A7-BAQ (msn 38247) ferried to Brisbane from Perth on March 21, as did A7-BEL (msn 64063) from Melbourne and A7-BEG (msn 60333) from Sydney.

A7-BEM had operated a scheduled Doha – Perth service on February 28, with A7-BAQ operating a scheduled service on the same route on March 9. A7-BEL had arrived in Melbourne on March 11 and A7-BEG landed in Sydney since February 28.

Unsafe airspace around Doha saw the return flights cancelled.

Aero South Pacific understands the aircraft moved to Brisbane will soon continue onto another airport to sit out the duration of the war. The airport has good maintenance and engineering facilities, as well as ample parking space.

Earlier in the week, a Qatar Airways A350-900 registered A7-AME (msn 163) flew empty from Adelaide (ADL) to Doha (DOH) after sitting idle in the South Australian capital since February 27.

Also last week, a B777-300ER registered as A7-BAF (msn 37661) parked at Canberra (CBR) since March 1 ferried back to Doha via Melbourne.

The Brisbane flights are one part of Qatar’s scramble to move aircraft out of the conflict zone. This includes ferrying 17 aircraft to Spain’s Teruel Airport (TEV) last week. The airline is operating a very limited schedule of around 40 flights per day – less than 10% of what it normally operates.

Normally, Qatar Airways operates up to 140 weekly aircraft movements across its six Australia airports. However, it has cancelled nearly all of those flights since the war started.

Similarly, Virgin Australia has cancelled its Doha services until at least March 28. The daily flights to and from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth use wet-leased Qatar Airways B777-300ERs.

Emirates continues to run some flights between Dubai and its Australian ports. Etihad is also operating some services to Australia.

Photo: Qatar Airways.

Contact the writer: andrew@aerosouthpacific.com