Qatar Airways has revealed it will add Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands, to its network from June 16, 2015 with a new daily flight from its Hamad International hub in Doha to the city’s Schiphol Airport. This growth will be facilitated by the arrival of additional new aircraft during 2015 and the route will be served using a 254-seat Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner configured with 22 fully-flat-bed seats in Business Class and 232 Economy Class seats.

The airline will be following its major Gulf hub rivals into the Amsterdam market and alongside supporting point-to-point business and leisure demand will also provide connection opportunities across the Middle East, Africa and the Far East via Doha. Emirates Airline launched its flights between Dubai and Amsterdam in May 2010 while Etihad Airways introduced flights between Abu Dhabi and Amsterdam in May 2013. Etihad now offers a double daily service and Emirates a single daily rotation to the Netherlands capital city.

“Amsterdam has long been on our list of destinations to introduce to our network, and we are delighted to now be adding this dynamic European city to our route map,” said His Excellency Akbar Al Baker, chief executive officer, Qatar Airways Group.

A port city and ever-growing destination for business, Amsterdam acts as a base for seven of the world's 500 largest companies, including Philips and ING. It is also home to two of the ten sites in the Netherlands listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List - the 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19-20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam.

The daily flights will depart from Doha in the morning, arriving into Amsterdam in early afternoon, with return flights to Doha departing in the late afternoon. The schedule provides the convenience and flexibility for passengers to travel to the city for short leisure breaks or business meetings. Interestingly, Qatar Airways has been unable to gain a regular slot at Schiphol Airport and flights will operate to two different schedules separated by a five minute interval across the week.

Here’s the proposed schedule for the new route, according to the airline’s press release...

Doha – Amsterdam
QR275 DOH0820 – 1355AMS 788 347
QR275 DOH0825 – 1400AMS 788 x347
Amsterdam – Doha
QR276 AMS1610 – 2315DOH 788 x347
QR276 AMS1620 – 2325DOH 788 347

With the addition of the city of Amsterdam, the total number of European destinations offered by Qatar Airways will grow to 34 – just under a quarter of the airline’s total route map. The carrier has witnessed rapid growth in its 17 years of operation and now operates a fleet of 146 aircraft to 146 business and leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.

In the last 12 months (December 2013 – November 2014), Etihad Airways carried an estimated 128,000 passengers on its route to Amsterdam with average loads of 66.4 per cent on the outbound flight from Abu Dhabi and 67.0 per cent on the return from Amsterdam. Meanwhile, in the same period Emirates Airline carried an estimated 463,000 passengers on the route with average loads of 83.6 per cent on the outbound flight from Dubai and 84.1 per cent on the return from Amsterdam.

In our analysis, below, we highlight the breakdown of passenger demand on each of these routes by passenger origin and destination during the last 12 months (December 2013 – November 2014). The data shows two very different stories. For Emirates traffic is dominated by connecting demand via its Dubai hub (73.6 per cent) with local traffic accounting for 24.8 per cent of the demand.

Meanwhile, for Etihad traffic is also dominated by connecting demand via its hub at Abu Dhabi (65.8 per cent), but to a much reduced scale, with reduced local traffic (6.7 per cent) but much stronger Bridge (16.1 per cent) and connection flows via Amsterdam (11.4 per cent versus 1.2 per cent at Emirates) thanks to its codeshare arrangement with KLM.