Qatar Airways has officially announced that it will be reducing capacity to JFK-New York City permanently from February 1st. From that date onwards, they will be using a 259 seater Boeing 777-200LR on the DOH-JFK sector rather than a 335 seater Boeing 777-300ER. This means a capacity reduction of 76 seats daily. QR's load factor to JFK over the previous year has not met up to their expectations and they feel that it would be wiser to instead a smaller aircraft to meet demand forecasts.
The good news for QR though is that they will be launching a 3rd daily flight to CMB-Colombo from March 28th which will conveniently connect via DOH to all of their USA flights in both directions with only a 2 hour transit. This will surely help increase loads to USA and give EK/EY/KU a tough time in gaining market share on the JFK-CMB sector. Lastly, QR has also officially confirmed that it will be increasing capacity to PVG-Shanghai from March 3rd onwards by deploying a larger Boeing 777-300ER on the route replacing the Airbus A 330-200 i.e. an increase of 430 seats per week approximately. QR flies to Shanghai five times per week nonstop from its Doha hub.
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