The national carrier’s CEO spoke to Bloomberg at the Hamad International Airport about the existing fleet and future orders.
Qatar Airways will release details of a new “sizeable” order of widebody aircrafts within weeks, the airline’s CEO Badr Mohammed Al-Meer told Bloomberg in the preview of an interview released Friday.
“We have so many things to wait for, from our financials to our new fleet order, which will all happen during May,” Al-Meer said, adding things were going as per the company’s plans.
Al-Meer had first revealed that a purchase request had been submitted to aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus for the “big order” in an interview with CNBC in March 2024.
Though Qatar Airways had originally planned to announce the details in April, the decision will now be announced in “maybe in three weeks, four weeks,” he said in the Bloomberg preview. The full interview is set to be released over the weekend.
Al-Meer said the request for purchase (RFP) was filed to get the best offer when probed if the airlines had already made a decision on the order, adding that both Boeing and Airbus aircrafts in the Qatar Airways fleet were “performing excellently.”
“As we speak, it is still fair game between both of them. A decision will be made in the next few days,” he said.
In the meantime, Qatar Airways has continued to receive airplanes as part of the deals that have already been announced. Although supply chain challenges have caused industry-wide delays to existing orders, the airline’s relatively new fleet has allowed it to “absorb” the effects, according to the CEO.
“Our fleet will move from an average age of eight, nine, or ten years to 12 or 14 years. So this has given us a room to absorb those delays in addition to all the deliveries that are taking place as we speak,” he added.
Media reports have predicted that delays could worsen with U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposed tariffs.
Qatar Airways intends to streamline its fleet to “fewer types of aircraft” to tackle supply chain issues and concerns related to spare parts, cabin crew training and more, he added.
The airline is in contact with both Boeing and its Europe-based competitor Airbus.
Beyond the widebody aircraft, the CEO said a decision had been made in case of narrowbodies.
“The part of our plan is to basically focus on one type of narrowbody. And as you know, we have an existing order of almost 60 Airbus A321Neos. So, indirectly, you know where our narrowbody strategy is going for,” Al-Meer said.
