“Incomprehensible”, “harmful”, “unbalanced”, the signing of a free trade agreement, Monday, October 18, between Qatar and the European Union arouses the anger of the airlines of the old continent.
Entered into force without even waiting for the internal ratification of the 27 Member States, this text will allow the company Qatar Airways to serve any city in Europe without any restriction of capacity or flight frequencies and thus operate its Doha hub at full speed towards Europe.
Of course, these rights have also been granted to European carriers, but they are much less interesting, unbalanced in view of the low volume that the Doha service represents for Air France, Lufthansa or British Airways.
In the Cargo business, this agreement goes even further. It grants Qatar Airways a fifth freedom right, which offers Qataria the possibility of making flights between the European Union and any third country.
However, since the Covid pandemic, the air freight sector has taken on considerable importance. If it represented around 15% of their revenue before the crisis, it now weighs nearly 30%.
Before the end of the year, Qatar Airways will be able to link Paris to Chicago directly. A godsend for the Gulf company, which has an impressive all-cargo fleet, twenty-six 777Fs and two Boeing 747-8Fs.
Expected rewards
By way of comparison, the Air France-KLM group only has six aircraft entirely dedicated entirely to cargo after making the decision more than ten years ago to focus on cargo in the hold. With this agreement, the first of its kind with a Gulf country, Brussels hopes to obtain compensation from Qatar Airways, particularly in terms of compliance with competition rules, social law and transparency of these accounts, in order to avoid the payment of payments. unlimited aid from the Emirate.
But in the absence of coercive measures, there is little chance that these clauses will be fully respected, especially since the start of discussions around this agreement in 2016, the situation has evolved. Hit hard by the health crisis, the main European companies have all received significant aid from their respective states: 7 billion euros for Air France, 3 for KLM, 9 for Lufthansa.
Aid largely conditional on the green light from the European Commission. Difficult and unwelcome in these conditions, to blame Qatar Airways.