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00:00We're going to turn now to the impact of global energy crunch on aviation.
00:03Hamad Ali Al-Qatar is the CEO of Qatar Airways Group.
00:06He's served in that role since December 2025, and he joins us now on set.
00:11How are you? I don't know if they caught that shot.
00:12I was just saying you seem a little bit far away, but we'll get there.
00:16Welcome. I was complaining to your staff earlier that I will say,
00:21and this is not just because the name is behind us,
00:23it is an incredible airline to fly, especially some of your products.
00:27And you guys were really out front in what we call it first in business class.
00:31Have you continued to see that demand for that product,
00:35even with some of the ground stops and some of the disruptions we've seen in the region with commercial air
00:40flights?
00:41Absolutely. Q Street is our award-winning business class product with privacy doors.
00:46We were the first to pioneer that level of detail within a business class cabin.
00:53It's in about 45% of our wide-body fleet.
00:55We fly to 160 destinations.
00:58We prioritize, basically, Q Suite in most of them.
01:02We're set to receive our Q Suite next gen, by the way, Christina, next year,
01:06which is a bit of an evolution on that front.
01:08So get ready for that one.
01:10All right. Maybe we'll have to do an interview in the Q Suite.
01:12Self-interested questions. I like that.
01:14I wanted to ask you just about what Christina was referring to,
01:16that is we're talking in the crucible of this conflict, of this crisis,
01:19and she mentioned the ground drops that you've seen.
01:21What has that meant for the business generally,
01:23having to navigate all of this, and how have passenger behaviors changed, if at all,
01:27as a result of what's been happening over the last six, seven months?
01:30So we're seeing about 75% of our passengers book now within a 60-day window.
01:36Passengers are booking later, but demand is still pretty strong.
01:38We started things at the beginning of this conflict with almost a standstill of operations
01:45for the first five, six days, and then we went to about 550 flights a day,
01:51receiving over about 115,000 passengers through our hub on a daily basis.
01:56So demand is pretty strong.
01:58Load factors are pretty high.
02:00We fly to about 170.
02:01We're going to start flying to about 170-plus destinations,
02:05getting back into destinations we used to fly to before.
02:08Zanzibar, we're set to get to new routes like Bogota and Caracas right now.
02:12Canberra pretty soon in December.
02:14So the demand picture is pretty resilient on that front.
02:17Latin America, a place of expansion for you.
02:19Oh, absolutely.
02:20We flew to Sao Paulo three times a day.
02:24That went to about one a day post-conflict,
02:28but back at it right now,
02:30and we're adding those two destinations pretty soon.
02:34We talk a lot about it's not the risk factor so much as it's the perception of risk.
02:40And when people are booking a ticket,
02:42I wonder if, especially if they have a luxury product,
02:44if they have the option right now not to go through the Middle East,
02:47if that's in their minds.
02:49Is that something you've seen in the data?
02:51You said the customers are mostly back.
02:53Have you seen a slight dip in just international customers since the conflict began?
02:57We definitely did see that, but we see a recovering picture.
03:02With travel advisories recovering in that sense or getting a bit better over the summer period,
03:08that meant a roaring picture from a demand perspective.
03:11Passengers are still flying in the Middle East.
03:13I think what's really important was the fact that carriers like Qatar Airways keep safety in our absolute priority right
03:22front and center.
03:23So managing the checkerboard of airspace issues, ensuring that we took a very, very gradual path to recovery.
03:31We saw passengers, and oil passengers in particular, flying back.
03:35We also saw resilient demands from U.S.-India flows, Asia-China flows,
03:41Southwest Pacific with Australia really proving to be a lot more resilient than we expected.
03:46I know we want to talk about fuel prices, but one last question on this point.
03:50That is, you were pretty new to the job when all of this began to unfold,
03:53and I wonder if you could take us back to the moment when this conflict began,
03:56and what it was like for you to have to navigate this, to kind of wonder what the duration of
04:01it might be,
04:02what the effect might be.
04:03How did you personally kind of get through those first few days, certainly?
04:06Oh, that was, so we had a bit of a trial period at Kola in January,
04:11where, if you recall, there was the potential prospect of something happening.
04:16So that kind of sharpened our thought-thinking process a little bit more.
04:22Don't forget that we had a little bit of a crisis to manage,
04:27and we recovered about 30,000 passengers in June last year
04:30when we had the initial crisis on the 23rd of June.
04:36Those were recovered in about 27 hours.
04:38So come Feb 28th, it was definitely something not to be reckoned with.
04:44It was our single largest crisis, I would argue, in our modern history.
04:49Now, we went through three crises over the last 10 years,
04:52but geopolitics is something we deal with on a daily basis in aviation.
04:56It's part of the game.
04:58I mean, just two weeks ago, we had an ash cloud in Indonesia.
05:03A few days after that, we had the air navigation systems in the UK
05:08pause or get suspended a little bit.
05:10So it's a checkerboard that we just have to manage,
05:12and personally speaking, it was extremely difficult,
05:16but we managed to get through.
05:19Safety, again, was paramount.
05:21Passengers and our people were my priority.
05:27So I'm incredibly proud of what the team has been able to accomplish.
05:31I think to David's point, we do need to talk about rising cost of fuel.
05:35It's impacting all the airlines.
05:36I know it's making the mechanics and the math a little bit harder.
05:40How long with these elevated fuel prices until it really starts to impact the way you do operations?
05:46Are you having to reevaluate the way you make this work?
05:51You know, fuel is definitely something we're all closely monitoring.
05:57Jet fuel is about $182 today, about 90% increase from Feb 28.
06:04I mean, that's a huge amount.
06:05It's massive.
06:06And I think what's cushioning the impact in that sense is that we started the year from an oil market
06:13perspective of a little bit of oversupply.
06:16Now, the strategic SPR, the strategic petroleum reserves, are depleting.
06:21We're noticing that the market is reacting appropriately.
06:25But so far, it's very demand-driven.
06:28Cost space is increasing, but we're managing it accordingly.
06:30We've got a very integrated group to look at fuel optimization, fuel efficiencies.
06:35We're not passing that cost to our customers at this stage in time.
06:39We saw at 23...
06:39Why not?
06:40Why aren't you...
06:41Are you strategically making the decision not to raise prices?
06:44So we are focused on...
06:46It's more of a...
06:48Less of a market share focus, but more of a capacity dimensioning focus.
06:52So what we're doing in that sense is that we're looking at routes and we're saying,
06:56OK, what are our most profitable routes?
06:58Let's double down on them.
06:58The less profitable routes we're suspending up until the demand picture recovers in that sense,
07:04or we're pausing for a limited period of time.
07:06So that way allows us to, A, you need to maintain your slugs.
07:10You need to maintain your loyal customer base.
07:12So as a result, we still have a pretty resilient picture just because it's demand-driven.
07:17People still want to travel.
07:19You talked at the beginning just about new routes that you're opening up,
07:23and it makes me wonder about your fleet and the degree which you're adding to it.
07:26And I know that just a few weeks into the job, you made a trip to France.
07:29You went to Airbus.
07:30How are you thinking about expansion of the fleet and that balance between Boeing and Airbus,
07:35which you and every CEO has to kind of consider this day and age?
07:38In the next five years, we're set to receive about 138 aircraft.
07:42138.
07:42Yeah.
07:43About 50% of them are going to be Airbus, and the rest of it is Boeing.
07:46So our fleet composition is going to be 787s, 777-9s, A350-1000s,
07:54which we are the world's largest operator of those wide-body aircraft.
07:59And we're going to recently add the new long-range A321s by the end of the year.
08:04They're going to go into service in the beginning of next year.
08:07So the combination of that, it gives us the ability to be agile, to pivot accordingly,
08:13and also optimize with our cargo business.
08:17We are the single largest carrier of international cargo in the world with about 12% global market share.
08:27So we're optimizing that from a freighter cargo perspective and ability perspective.
08:31And cargo has been roaring from a demand perspective, especially this agnostic.
08:36So they're roaring.
08:38I see what you said.
08:38They're roaring.
08:39Oh, yeah, exactly.
08:40Flying, soaring, roaring.
08:42But your plan to grow more cargo is important for you going forward.
08:45Cargo is incredibly important.
08:46We're set to double down on that business.
08:50Agnostic of what we've seen with the state's closure,
08:53we've seen demand pick up from an energy transition perspective,
08:56from the semiconductor boom, from all the funds that are going into,
09:01all the capital that's flowing into AI.
09:04And as a result, our passengers are actually picking other airways cargo
09:07to transport their goods and services globally.
09:11Have you seen an uptick in that part of the business, given that that is one of the few remaining
09:15ways to get things out
09:16if you can't ship them through the strait reliably?
09:18One hundred percent.
09:20We saw it in the beginning of the conflict where cargo basically shipped everything from produce to berries to essential
09:29goods and services into the home market.
09:31But at the same time, it is a massive hub, and it's set to grow.
09:37And that hedge in that sense from a cargo business really gives Qatar and Qatar Airways that flexibility to maneuver
09:45accordingly.
09:46But we're also looking at cargo from a customer's side of things.
09:50We're learning from the passenger business to adopt things into the slightly more archaic, old-fashioned cargo business.
09:57So our customers are actually choosing us because we're treating them like they should be in 2026.
10:04We started off, Christina, talking about the Q-suite, you guys off-camera talking about the mint tea, all of
10:09the amenities.
10:10Yes, Qatar Airways is literally the reason I obsessively drink mint tea now, yes.
10:14Let me close by asking you about Starlink, because I just flew a flight on another airline that had Starlink,
10:18and it's revelatory.
10:19It is so much faster.
10:21What is your deal that you have with Starlink, and how important is it to get that into all of
10:24the planes that you're flying?
10:25So we are the single largest operator of a Starlink fleet, or a Starlink-equipped fleet.
10:32We just recently equipped our 787-9s with Starlink.
10:37We banter a little bit with our team on the technical side of things,
10:42because right now they're able to install Starlink in about three to four hours on an aircraft,
10:47which is basically the envy of other airlines coming,
10:52okay, what are you guys doing with Starlink?
10:53How are you guys deploying it so fast?
10:55We've learned, we've trailblazed the Starlink product.
10:58It has been a stellar selling point.
11:03You're on an 18-hour flight to Auckland.
11:06You definitely take advantage of high-speed Wi-Fi.
11:11That's incredible.
11:12You know, we're dealing with a little bit of noise as a result of people...
11:16Sorry, we're dealing with a little bit of noise here.
11:18Exactly, exactly.
11:19But we're excited to continue to grow,
11:21and Starlink is going to go on most of our fleet by the end of next year.
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