Gulf Airs 92 mile flight becomes 550 miles.

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  • rferguson
    Participant

    Qatar is currently hosting the Gulf Cup in Doha. What makes it a little uncomfortable is that it is still facing a blockade from their neighbouring countries including Bahrain.

    It seems during the cup they are prepared to put politics aside and Qatar granted Gulf Air permission to operate charter flights from Bahrain to Doha. In the past few days GF has operated more than a dozen.

    It seems Bahrain did not want to lose face in the region by flying ‘directly’ between the two countries (which are 92 miles apart and normally an airborne time of around 28 minutes). So it decided to get creative. Instead of the short short hop, ALL the charter flights instead flew in the opposite direction to Doha into Kuwaiti airspace. Kuwait is currently not blockading Qatar and has no flight ban between the two countries. Once in Kuwaiti airspace the Gulf Air planes then did a 180 and flew back (past Bahrain) and onto Doha.

    https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/GFA7724/history/20191208/0752Z/OTHH/OBBI

    All seems a bit silly – I mean it’s still a Bahraini registered aircraft to Doha coming from Bahrain that has just flown five times further to get to its destination.

    Has there been any similar cases as this?


    sleak76
    Participant

    Didn’t the UAE pull the same thing a few days before? I seem to have read that somewhere but I am not sure where.


    capetonianm
    Participant

    At the other end of the scale, there’s this.

    Qatar Airways has operated a scheduled flight between two cities that takes just nine minutes.
    The Doha-based airline has flown a cargo flight between Maastricht in the Netherlands and Liège, Belgium, which are just 24 miles apart.
    On 3 November, a Boeing 777 took off from Maastricht for Liège, according to tracking data from Flight Radar. The flight took under 10 minutes.


    alainboy56
    Participant

    They are like children down in these parts

    I know a couple, a lovely local couple from Abu Dhabi, and alas ‘his’ mother is Qatari.
    When they wish to meet each other or pass to see each other, they fly via Muscat. (which is in fact how I met them, ‘her’ at least, including ‘his’ mother the Qatari, and also ‘her’ mother (an Emirati), on a trip AUH-MCT-DOH.

    What a mess! And just because the ‘brothers are not breaking bread together’ (the positive version is an expression in arabic)


    Sami
    Participant

    Qatar has been trying its best to mend things and were generous and gracious hosts during the recent Gulf Cup. Unfortunately, it’s the childish UAE and Bahrain who for some reason (jealousy most probably) cannot tolerate even the slightest gesture from Qatar. As the Arab proverb says: The dogs bark and the caravan sails on.


    capetonianm
    Participant

    Once upon a time, there was a beautiful country in central Africa, named after its founder, Cecil John Rhodes. Sadly, sanctions were imposed on Rhodesia by many other countries, and books have been written on this. We all know the outcome.

    At one time, when the famous bridge was closed, if you wanted to get from Victoria Falls (Rhodesia) to Livingstone (Zambia), a distance of maybe 10 miles, there were various routings to choose from, involving going via Salisbury, Johannesburg, Blantyre, or Lusaka.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    alainboy56
    Participant

    @sami — One of the reasons of course is that Qatar Airways almost killed Gulf Air and have very severely damaged Etihad Airways, so if anyone professes and claims the reason for the brothers not talking anymore to be terrorism, then they are living in cloud cuckoo land.
    It was/is imho purely economical.
    QR had upwards of 32 flights a day from UAE taking pax away from Air Arabia, EK and EY to Doha and onwards to the world, so there’s the logic behind it.

    @captonianm – I believe the actions in the 70’s were because of a certain ex RAF pilot.
    Talking about Livingstone on the Zambian side of Vic Falls, I had the pleasure, in the early 80’s of flying in the jumpseat of a Convair 540 from Jan Smuts for most of the flight, including descent and a visual arrival/landing there. Quite spectacular I must say.
    Stayed in a Hilton Hotel, if I remember rightly, 100m from the rim edge called “whispering something….”
    Don’t know if its still there. But I do recall the resident monkeys were a bit of a nuisance.


    GivingupBA
    Participant

    alainboy56 said, “I had the pleasure, in the early 80’s of flying in the jumpseat of a Convair 540 from Jan Smuts for most of the flight, including descent and a visual arrival/landing there. Quite spectacular I must say.”

    Lucky you.

    And that’s why I like helicopter flights (as a passenger) – sometimes, with luck, you can sit next to the pilot, with an unparalleled view of the journey and also what he/ she is doing. Fascinating.


    Sami
    Participant

    alainboy56, I have no idea what your response to me has anything to do with anything I have mentioned in my post.


    alainboy56
    Participant

    @Sami – what I was trying to explain was that your so called “Childish” countries have badly suffered economically and that is why they will not budge at all despite friendly and amicable gestures from Qatar. They are protecting their economies.


    capetonianm
    Participant

    capetonianm
    Participant

      This reply has been reported for inappropriate content.

    Once upon a time, there was a beautiful country in central Africa, named after its founder, Cecil John Rhodes.

    Sometimes words fail me, in fact, they don’t, but words that I could use here fail me. So come on, man up, and grow up, and tell us why you think my response was ‘inappropriate’. I accept that it was not entirely relevant to the thread.


    canucklad
    Participant

    [quote quote=982953]So come on, man up, and grow up, and tell us why you think my response was ‘inappropriate’.[/quote]

    Firstly it wasn’t me that reported you, but surely when you reread your comment capetonianm you can potentially see why some might interpret your words as being pro a regime that was less than democratic to the majority of its population, hence the sanctions against the regime


    capetonianm
    Participant

    This is probably not the place to pursue this discussion but when I wrote :
    ” Once upon a time, there was a beautiful country in central Africa, named after its founder, Cecil John Rhodes. Sadly, sanctions were imposed on Rhodesia by many other countries, and books have been written on this. We all know the outcome,” my words were indeed supportive of that regime and meant to have been understood as such.
    A benign non-democratic dictatorship was replaced by one of the most evil and murderous regimes in the world, causing millions of people to live with poverty, malnutrition, disease, and death. It appears to be politically incorrect to state this blatantly obvious truth.

    2 users thanked author for this post.

    Sami
    Participant

    Pathetic racist drivel. The Mugabe regime was indeed atrocious and nobody in their right mind would defend it, but to defend Ian Smith’s racist apartheid regime is also mind-boggling. This has nothing to do with political correctness which by the way I’m also sick of in many instances, but there was nothing benign about racist apartheid Rhodesia. I was not the one who reported but now I wish I have. Some people still romanticize and yearn for the days when they were controlling the lives of millions of others in the evil apartheid regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia but thankfully, they are now in the trashcans of history where they belong. Condescending garbage from people looking at history backwards.

    1 user thanked author for this post.
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