Akbar al-Baker, chief executive officer of Qatar Airways, speaks to the media after the airline’s inaugural flight from Doha to Montreal landed at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport.
Photograph by: Allen McInnis, THE GAZETTE
MONTREAL - There is no linkage between additional landing rights Qatar Airways is seeking in Canada and the Doha-based carrier’s oft-delayed purchase of CSeries aircraft from Montreal’s Bombardier Inc., airline CEO Akbar al-Baker told reporters Thursday.
“We don’t (mix) commercial issues (with) issues that have got to do something with the government. We are a company,” said al-Baker the day after arriving on Qatar Airways’s inaugural flight to Montreal after a hard-won five-year battle to secure three weekly passenger flights to Canada.
Qatari ambassador to Canada Salem Mubarak al-Shafi called The Gazette to express his “wish to mark this great moment, this historic occasion” as a starting point for developing bilateral relations further between Canada and Qatar.
Negotiations for airline landing rights are conducted between governments, but al-Shafi noted that he was not acting as spokesperson for Qatar Airways.
Asked about any linkage between more landing slots and a CSeries purchase, he replied: “No, no, I will never connect this together.”
Al-Baker engaged in his trademark mix of light banter and pointedly sharp remarks. Qatar Airways has dickered with Bombardier for nearly two years, at times very publicly and heatedly, over a planned purchase of between 15 and 25 of its future CSeries CS300 130-seat airliner.
Al-Baker said that the sale is still on, but his estimates of its timing varied between “maybe next month,” “in the not-too-distant future” and “maybe next year.”
Qatar also will soon launch another round of “bilaterals,” government-to-government talks to try to convince Transport Canada to grant the fast-growing Persian Gulf airline more landing slots in Canada.
How many more?
“As many flights to as many cities in Canada as possible.
“We are looking forward to having daily frequency (from Doha) to Montreal, and daily frequencies to two other destinations in Canada.”
Al-Baker would not say if Toronto and Vancouver were the next targets, but added Qatar will apply for more “once a 12-month period is over.”
The airline announces its expansion plans only six months ahead of time to give rivals as little time as possible to adapt their strategy, he added.
In Canada’s case, “I know that the negotiations to traffic rights are impeded by the objections from Air Canada. But I repeat ... that it is not in the interest of the travelling public and passengers to restrict competition.”
By turns conciliatory and confrontational, al-Baker said “please relay this message to Air Canada ... Even though we have started these frequencies, (Air Canada’s) forward bookings are not affected – which means there’s room for growth.”
The carrier is growing exponentially, one of three Gulf airlines to do so in the last decade, along with Emirates and Etihad, all of which are requesting more access to Canada. But Air Canada has argued that the competition from the trio of carriers is unfair given that they are generally government-owned, pay no taxes in their country and are financed by their governments from huge oil or natural gas revenues.
The Montreal-based airline president, Calin Rovinescu, has said that the tiny population basin in the three nation states – 1.7 million in Qatar, of whom only 300,000 are citizens – does not warrant the remarkable growth of their airlines on a market basis and can only be accomplished with market-distorting financial aid and breaks from their governments.
Qatar, for instance, is building a vast $14.5-billion U.S. terminal in Doha. Its airline added 10 new destinations last year, six this year so far – three of them in June alone – and seven more in the second half of 2011. Its fleet of 99 planes is half that of Air Canada, and will rise to 120 by 2013. It also has 200 new planes on order worth $40 billion U.S. In various speeches, Rovinescu called Gulf carriers’ extraordinary expansions an unfair competition attempt to reroute transit traffic from Air Canada hubs like Frankfurt and London through Doha to final destinations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
But using an epithet, al-Baker called that “misleading information.”
“We are not government-owned. The 50-per-cent stake (by Doha) is, as a matter of fact, a share that the government has taken in a public company – not vice versa.”
And noting that Qatar Airways is adding many destinations and multiplying frequencies to existing ones, “our flights are not filled with air. They are filled with paying passengers.”
“And foreign carriers in my country don’t pay taxes either. So if they have a tax problem, they should not blame foreign carriers, they should blame their own government.”
Ironically, Rovinescu and al-Baker agree on that score. The former has repeatedly called for Ottawa to stop treating aviation “like a cash cow” by piling on airport rents, taxes, fees and charges on the industry, making Air Canada $1 billion more costly to operate in Canada annually than it would be in the U.S. Al-Baker called Air Canada’s representations to Ottawa to restrict Qatar flights “just a tactic on behalf of Air Canada to stifle competition.”
But Air Canada spokesperson John Reber noted in an email that there is plenty of competition.
“With the introduction of Qatar’s three weekly flights, this now represents nine flights per week in each direction between Canada and the Gulf states.”
The stakes are huge, Rovinescu noted in a speech last October.
“We are deploying more than $2 billion in aircraft exclusively to our Asian routes. Imagine any manufacturing company building a $2-billion factory to serve just one market segment. It is indeed a significant commitment.
“Let me address the elephant in the room,” he added. “Air Canada is fully supportive of fair and balanced open skies with all countries where there is reciprocal demand,” like between Canada and the U.S.
“We are not, however, supportive of demolishing our hubs and gateways or turning over our hard-earned network and flow traffic to state-supported carriers of countries where there is no such reciprocal demand. Ultimately, this translates into less economic activity, fewer jobs and fewer routes served.”
Al-Baker concluded that “we will prove to (Ottawa) that we have not dented Air Canada, that we are operating with high load factors and they should give us additional (landing rights).”
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