With the strikes going on due to what crew at BA claim is poverty pay, Qatar have sent BA some A320 aircraft to ease the effect on operations, this is because they have a 20% stake in the company and they want BA as an investor to do well and maintain profitability.
Here is a video of the Qatar flight replacing a BA one and their crew. The plane is an ex Al Maha meaning it still has that interior but it is still far better then what BA offers, if it had the Qatar cabin then there would be IFE on every seat, it goes to show that BA canāt even compete with a Low cost airline like the would be Al Maha which is now scrapped. The crew were all Qatar employees apart from the captain, and all the onboard catering and cutlery/utensils were all BA. This flight also used the British airways Fligth number and callsign.
Hope you enjoy
Here is a screenshot from FlightRadar showing the aircraft being flown to London empty:
I heard HiFly also transport their A340s to save BAWās operations. But I think itās good for Qatar as most of their A320s are supposed to be used on ME routes prior to the sanctions. It would be better to transport it to BAW and help to gain revenue (Iām sure BAW will share some profits to Qatar for it) instead grounding them in Hamad Airport
Itās good for the passengers but for BA crew on strike itās not good at all. The whole point is BA are left with no choice but to meet their demands and quite frankly I think that they ought to sort it out once and for all as their image is going downhill very fast.
I would also like to point out that with these issues in the Middle East and the cancelled flights to Dubai alone they have excess crew and aircraft that are most likely not being used so thatās probably another factor as to why they helped so willingly.
Though not a fan of British Airways and have not liked them and do feel they should go on strike, passengers should not have to get tied up with the strike. Qatar has done an amazing thing for the passengers who have to be caught up in the strike. Hopefully this gets settled and the British Airways pilots get their way quickly and return to flying. Real worry is BA will rely on this and do nothing about the issues causing more possible strikes
Earlier this year when there were strikes BA wet leased other operators like Titan, Thomson, and Jettime in order to minimise disruption to their passengers. This wet leasing of QR aircraft is based on the same principle. I am not aware anyone was claiming Thomson or Titan āsavedā BA then so not clear why QR are āsavingā BA now.
I wonder what deal was cut. Surely Qatar Airlines is getting something in monetary expense outside of their investment in BA. Would not be surprised if a portion of the revenue from the flights are going directly to QA
It goes further then that. They own part of BA which is far more valuable as they canāt have a company they own part of having operations severely affected.
They own shares in the parent company IAG. Owning shares in a company does not come with any obligation to do anything if there is a strike at a subsidiary.
As I noted up thread, in previous strikes earlier this year BA didnāt use QR aircraft at all, and I donāt remember any suggestion QR were trying to send any aircraft to help cover the strikes.
It is more to do with the fact that in the busy summer period other European operators donāt happen to have the aircraft available to lease to BA which were available in previous strikes this year, and that with the issues in Qatar atm QR happen to have a few aircraft and crews sat around doing nothing.
In any case just to note that QR could never own a majority stake in IAG due to foreign ownership laws.
There were various reasons most likely as to why it never previously happened and yes owning a share in a company means you would help if possible as ultimately you own part of it. It is apparently hard to just 7 empty planes accross the world to London and they had been in talks for a while.
