Qatar Airways cancels today

Qatar Airways has cancelled its flights scheduled to arrive in Male’ today.

An Airline Official said that the two flights scheduled to arrive to Male’ today were cancelled because they could not come to an agreement with GMR regarding the increased handling charges.

Two Qatar Airways flights arrive in Maldives daily. They are scheduled for 7.30am and 2.30pm.

A Qatar Airways flight was held for about one hour last night at Male’ Ibrahim Nasir International Airport by GMR, indicating that they had not paid the necessary fees.

Qatar Airways Country Manager for Maldives Sayyid Mohamed Tariq said in an interview with Sun that the airline does not accept the airport’s decision to increase to 51 percent of handling fees, and thus will not make this payment.

“The issue here is the increase in ground handling charges. Other airlines are also concerned about this. How can we pay something we do not accept?” Sayyid Mohamed said.

Qatar Airways said that they are currently working on facilitating the arrival of their passengers to Maldives on other flights.

An official of GMR said that Qatar Airways has overdue handling fees of 14 months, and that they refused to make the payment even when the flight was grounded last night.

“The arrangement is that they pay for every trip. We had to hold the flight because they had not paid the fees in a long time. But still they refused to pay,” the official said. “As there were children onboard the flight we let them go, but the agreement remains that they should pay for every trip.”

He said that GMR has invited Qatar Airways to hold discussions regarding this matter.

Qatar Airways has recently warned against discontinuation of the operation of flights to Maldives. Sri Lankan Airlines has also made the decision to cease the operation of direct flights between Maldives and Europe. Thomson is considering a reduction in the number of flights to the Maldives.

The government has indicated that the party behind increasing the ground handling charges is not GMR.