Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, ruled out the possibility of the UK carrier using Doha’s new airport for flights beyond the current codeshare deal. Andy Rain / EPA
Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, ruled out the possibility of the UK carrier using Doha’s new airport for flights beyond the current codeshare deal. Andy Rain / EPA
Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, ruled out the possibility of the UK carrier using Doha’s new airport for flights beyond the current codeshare deal. Andy Rain / EPA
Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, ruled out the possibility of the UK carrier using Doha’s new airport for flights beyond the current codeshare deal. Andy Rain / EPA

Business

The Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker has previously said that the Gulf airline is open to the possibility of a revenue-sharing partnership with other members of the oneworld alliance, whose members include airberlin, Cathay Pacific, American Airlines and British Airways.

Shereen El Gazzar

June 03, 2014

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The British Airways chief said yesterday that a potential joint venture with Qatar Airways is still under discussion.

“We look at various different structures of joint ventures. You can have a revenue share, you can have a profit share, you can have things that fall between the middle. This is all the sort of issues that are subject to discussions between us,” said Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways.

“It won’t necessary have to mean a profit share, but we will have discussions about these issues in the right time.”

The Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker has previously said that the Gulf airline is open to the possibility of a revenue-sharing partnership with other members of the oneworld alliance, which it joined in October.

Qatar Airways is the only Gulf carrier to join the alliance, whose members include airberlin, Cathay Pacific, American Airlines and British Airways.

Mr Walsh also ruled out the possibility of the UK carrier using Doha’s new airport for flights beyond the current codeshare deal.

“We will feed into that and connect into Qatar, same way that Qatar is feeding into the Heathrow hub and connecting to some of the British Airways network,” said Mr Walsh. “It’s about working jointly together. I won’t see British Airways flying beyond that. I would love to use the airport here, because it’s fantastic.”

The new US$17 billion Hamad International Airport opened in May after a series of delays. The new hub is designed to accommodate 30 million passengers annually, rising to 50 million at full capacity. But if expanded, it could cope with as many as 80 million passengers.

“The problem that we have in Europe [is] because we took the infrastructure for granted. We debate building additional infrastructure. The debate goes on forever. Here they have the debate and then move and do something,” said Mr Walsh.

“Heathrow will be taken over by Dubai as the busiest airport this year. When you think back in 2001, Dubai was number 99 in the world, so in a very short period of time it went from number 99 to number one,” he added.

selgazzar@thenational.ae

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