5 December 2013 marked the first anniversary of the launching of a Warsaw route by Qatar Airways, which made flights to such destinations as the Seychelles, Maldives, Mauritius or Phuket much more affordable. The longest journeys to Australia and New Zealand, with a stop-over in Doha or Dubai, became more comfortable too, taking now 22 instead of 28 hours.

At the Qatar’s inauguration ceremony in Warsaw the airline’s CEO Akbar al-Baker said that European airlines were afraid of competition from Arabic operators as they wanted to continue overcharging for a poor quality product and talked about the unavoidable price competition. His predictions turned out to be correct. Since then, the price of long-distance economy flight tickets has dropped to 2,000 zlotys. Business class flights have also become cheaper.

“The more expensive cabin is virtually fully booked on all traditional flights; the trend is also noticeable on charter flights operated with LOT’s Dreamliners, where you have to pay 1,500-2,000 zlotys extra to fly business class,” said Krzysztof Moczulski, an aviation market analyst from Lotnictwo.net.pl.

Maciej Pyrka, Emirates country manager for Poland, admitted that at first he was a little terrified when he saw the airline’s forecasts for the Polish market. “Now I know the analysts in Dubai were right. All their forecasts came true. In some cases they even underestimated our market”, he said. Emirates planes flying between Warsaw and Dubai have loading factors of over 80% . The first and business classes are usually fully booked, with most passengers being Poles.

Maciej Pyrka added: “In 9 months of 2013 we carried 78,000 passengers from Warsaw – 90,000 if we include those who travelled only to Dubai”.

Source: Chopin Airport