Coronavirus outbreak bringing untold losses to Qatar Airways

Mustafa Kamel

Qatar continues to sustain economic losses as a result of the outbreak of the coronavirus in it.

Qatar Airways is, meanwhile, the prime victim of the virus outbreak in the minor Gulf state. The national Qatari carrier suffers unprecedented recession. It sustained losses of $639 million this fiscal year. This is nine-fold the losses the carrier sustained last year.

Qatar Airways warned in an internal memo against the prospect of sacking a large number of its employees in the coming period as a result of these losses.

The Qatari national carrier had recently signed a letter of intent for the purchase of 60 new airplanes. However, the deal can cause the company to go bankrupt soon.

Huge losses

The coronavirus outbreak has negatively affected the Qatari economy. Qatar Airways has been at the center of all this.

Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Airways Ahmed al-Baker said last week that the global airplane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing had refused to delay the handover of the new planes. Each of the three parties, namely Qatar Airways, Airbus and Boeing, does not apparently want to foot the bill of the coronavirus outbreak.

Al-Baker said his company would have to cancel out the deal if the two companies had refused to postpone the handover of the planes.

The plane handover postponement is a major blow to the Qatari economy, given Qatar’s dependence on revenues from the civil aviation sector.

Qatar Airways also wants to keep over 20% of its fleet out of service for the foreseeable future. The company does not expect to operate flights to all its 165 destinations before 2023.