Qatar Airways announces massive USA expansion

Qatar Airways has officially revealed major plans to expand its presence in the USA marketplace in 2016 with 3 new destinations being announced along with a frequency increase to an existing destination. The main highlights are as follows:

LAX - new daily nonstop flights using a B772LR effective 01JAN16

ATL - new daily nonstop flights using a B772LR effective 01JUL16

BOS - new daily nonstop flights using an A359 effective 16MAR16

JFK - frequencies increased to double daily (new flight is on an A359) effective 01MAR16. The new JFK schedule is mentioned below:

QR 703 Dep DOH 0130 Arr JFK 0725
QR 704 Dep JFK 1025 Arr DOH 0600

Comments:

There are a couple of valid reasons (IMO) why the launch of these USA destinations is pushed into 2016:

1. A359 delivery timetable (obvious for BOS route)

2. More importantly, QR realizes that they face a severe capacity bottle neck situation with regards to their India bound flights in terms of capacity being offered. Their team now has almost a year to sort this out and ensure that they get more access into India in order to allow its entire network to feed it by making the departure timings cater to two different hub wave banks at DOH airport rather than the present one only (2000-2130 departure in particular). If this is not resolved by the time BOS comes online in particular, it will be very difficult attracting decent S/F across their USA services !

FYI I expect JFK to become a double daily A359 operated service by Summer 2016 season in order to make it easier both for crew rotations + selling capacity.

On another note, I dont see how and why ATL was chosen ahead of SFO !