Qatar Airways has an impressive network of long-haul destinations in the United States of America. Indeed, current scheduling data made available by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, shows that the Qatari flag carrier and oneworld member flies to a grand total of 11 US cities from its main hub at Doha Hamad International Airport (DOH). However, a notable omission from this list is Las Vegas.

It isn’t as if Qatar Airways has never wanted to fly from Doha to Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Nevada. On the contrary, the carrier announced in 2017 that it was planning to launch a new nonstop route to Nevada the following year. However, these flights ultimately never came to fruition, and, nowadays, there is very little in terms of even connecting traffic between Vegas and the Middle East.

Big Plans

Credit: Great Circle Map

It was January 12, 2017, when Qatar Airways first announced its plans to fly from its main hub at Doha Hamad International Airport to Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, on a nonstop basis. By then, the carrier had been serving the US for a decade, having first flown to Newark (EWR) in 2007, and its American network had grown to a grand total of ten cities. Vegas would have been the 11th.

At the time of the announcement, Qatar Airways planned to commence operations on this route on January 8, 2018, using its Boeing 777-200LRs. With four flights a week planned in each direction, the carrier was clearly cautiously optimistic about its prospects on the route, which, had it launched, would have seen Qatar Airways become the first Gulf carrier to serve Vegas. Then-CEO Akbar Al-Baker said that:

“Growing our western United States network is important to the airline as we are seeing exponential growth in passenger demand from the East via our state-of-the-art hub in Doha.”

Diplomatic Issues Prevented The Route (And Others) From Starting

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However, despite the considerable promise and excitement that surrounded this new route, Qatar Airways never did end up operating any scheduled commercial passenger flights to or from Las Vegas. Instead, according to contemporary reporting by One Mile At A Time, this route was a casualty of the 2017 Gulf blockade. This arose amid diplomatic tensions between Qatar and some of its neighbor nations.

The upshot of this was that aircraft registered in Qatar could no longer use the airspace of these countries, which included the likes of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. As such, Qatar Airways had to take stock and slow down its network growth efforts, with the Las Vegas route being among the casualties. Other routes that didn’t start included Rio de Janeiro and Santiago de Chile.

Vegas remains absent from Qatar Airways’ network today. This July, it has 418 US-bound flights. New York (JFK) is the most popular, with 93 (three a day). Dallas (DFW) will see 62 (two a day), with Chicago (ORD), Houston (IAH), Miami (MIA), Seattle (SEA), and Washington (IAD) served daily or more. Lower frequencies can be found in Atlanta (ATL), Boston (BOS), Los Angeles (LAX), and San Francisco (SFO).

Long-Haul In Las Vegas

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Qatar Airways might be counting its blessings that it never managed to fly between Doha and Vegas. After all, booking data sourced by Simple Flying’s James Pearson shows that a combined two-way total of just 2,775 guests flew between these cities last year, or around eight a day on average. Even Tel Aviv, the most popular Middle Eastern destination from Las Vegas, only had 26,918, or 74 a day.

Of course, that does not mean that Las Vegas is totally void of long-haul flights. Rather, those that it does handle tend to serve destinations in Europe, meaning that those flying to the Middle East most likely have to connect there. London Heathrow (LHR) is the most popular, with 75 flights this July, followed by Amsterdam (AMS) on 31 and Frankfurt (FRA) on 30. Seoul (ICN) is its only Asian destination.