On May 11, Qatar Airways announced an extraordinarily unusual new route. In just two months, providing extremely little advanced notice to drive awareness and sales, the carrier will lift off from its Doha Hamad International Airport (DOH) hub to Bogotá (BOG) and Caracas (CCS).

It will, of course, be the first time the oneworld member has had passenger flights to Colombia and Venezuela. It brings its South American network to three destinations, joining São Paulo, which has been part of its network since 2010.

Qatar Airways To BOG & CCS

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On July 22, Qatar Airways will leave DOH for Upper South America, with BOG and CCS served triangularly. Interestingly, the airline’s website shows that the first day’s service will run DOH-CCS-BOG-DOH. This is notable because of BOG’s renowned high elevation, which reduces takeoff performance with a high payload. And at 7,179 nautical miles (13,296 km) back to the Gulf, it is a very long way.

From the second service onward, the routing will change to DOH-BOG-CCS-DOH. This setup makes more sense. It’ll enable a higher passenger and freight payload, assuming, of course, that the flights will be sufficiently full anyway. It is not yet clear if fifth freedom rights will exist between BOG and CCS. In any case, passengers would only be able to fly in one direction, which reduces usability.

These Are The New Service’s Details

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The brand-new route will only be served twice-weekly, with the 272-seat or 276-seat Boeing 777-200LR deployed. QSuites and Starlink will be available. The extremely low frequency is notable and perhaps telling. Speaking anonymously, a source told Simple Flying that “the route has obviously been ordered by the Qatari government, otherwise it simply wouldn’t be twice-weekly.”

Including the ground time in BOG, the one-stop service to CCS will be blocked at a whopping 20 hours and ten minutes. Examining Qatar Airways’ schedule submission to OAG for July to December indicates that this will be its new second-longest passenger link in its entire network. This is based on combining nonstop and one-stop operations.

Auckland back to DOH via Adelaide will exceed it, which is timed at up to 20 hours and 15 minutes. Due to the war in Iran, the airline will stop in South Australia between June and September. Thereafter, it is scheduled to return to a nonstop operation. When this happens, DOH-BOG-CCS will become the carrier’s new longest passenger operation.

The leg between DOH and BOG is timed at up to 16 hours and 35 minutes. This means it is Qatar Airways’ new third-longest nonstop flight for the rest of the year, after Auckland back to DOH (resumes in October; up to 17 hours and 20 minutes) and DOH to Dallas (up to 17 hours).

Hang On: What’s The Demand From BOG & CCS?

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Booking data for February 2025 to January 2026 indicate that approximately 146,000 passengers flew between BOG/CCS and the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern and Southern Africa. That is equivalent to 400 daily passengers, which is not a huge volume, especially as it is well-targeted by Turkish Airlines (which serves BOG and CCS from Istanbul) and Emirates (which serves BOG via Miami).

The ten most-trafficked markets were BOG-Dubai, CCS-Beirut, CCS-Dubai, BOG-Tel Aviv, BOG-Karachi, BOG-Delhi, BOG-Kolkata, BOG-Abu Dhabi, BOG-Mumbai, and CCS-Tehran (clearly off-limits right now). Venezuela has 750,000+ people of Lebanese citizenship or descent, with Beirut likely to be a key target for Qatar Airways.