England’s flagship carrier British Airways have announced plans to launch 2 brand new direct services to Doha, Qatar and Muscat, Oman. Normally, customers will have to stop off in Bahrain but from October 30th, it will be a direct service.
The Doha and Bahrain services will operate daily with a Boeing B787-9 aircraft while the Muscat service will only operate 5x per week. In terms of competition, it will be interesting to see how Oman Air cope with this new competition from BA. Also, as Oman Air and BA are 2 flagship carriers, it will be also interesting to see who wins the price wars on these services.
As BA are also operating to Doha, they will have competition from Qatar Airways who offer far more services from Heathrow to the Qatari capital. Whether BA would be able to survive in this market is an interesting question due to the competition already from the Middle Eastern Carriers.