Qatar Airways will resume flights from Doha to Auckland on June 16, using a new stop in Adelaide for a daily service that will run for just under three months. The last departure from Doha on the one-stop schedule is set for September 14.
The airline’s QR914 service will leave Doha at 8:00 pm, land in Adelaide at 3:30 PM the next day, then continue to Auckland after a 90-minute ground stop and depart Adelaide at 5:00 PM. The return QR915 flight will leave Auckland at 5:45 PM, reach Adelaide at 8:30 pm, pause again until 10:00 PM, and arrive back in Doha at 5:00 AM the next day.
The restart restores a connection Qatar Airways had previously flown daily before suspending Auckland service amid conflict in nearby Iran, and before that, it operated Auckland nonstop from Doha. The Adelaide routing is new, but Auckland itself is not a new destination for the airline.
There is a clear trade-off in the plan. Qatar Airways is tentatively aiming to bring back nonstop Doha-Auckland flights from the middle of September, which would end the temporary stop in Adelaide and mark a return to the longer-haul service it flew before the current disruption in the Middle East. The one-stop flights will use Boeing 777-300ER aircraft with 354 seats, including 42 QSuite business class flatbeds and 312 economy seats, under the 77P layout.