From the moment Qatar was named the host nation of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, considerable planning started to make sure that not only did Qatar have the stadiums in place but other matters such as travel infrastructure was adequate.
In 2011, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy was established, a governmental body to oversee preparations. Hamad International Airport opened in 2014 and the first stadium, Khalifa International was ready in 2017 then tournaments were organised before the big event in 2022.
The 2022 World Cup achieved many firsts including being in the Arab world and being the first compact tournament with 75 kilometres being the furthest distance between stadiums. Fans could go to more than one game per day, it was the first fully carbon neutral World Cup, the first served by only two airports and the first one served by a single ground handling agent.
Hosting such a prestigious event presents a lot of challenges such as accommodating for a large increase in passenger numbers and serving VIPs and general aviation. In the group stages, there were at least four games in a day, which meant eight teams and eight head of states and other associated guests such as the media.
Jukowski said: “The nature of our business in Doha has relatively predictable schedules. For this event we had to be prepared for huge charter requests, for example, we don’t know which teams will go through and so we don’t know from which countries you can expect additional traffic. In most cases, when unexpected teams do well, a lot of fans come to support them. We had that with the Moroccan team when suddenly we were flooded with handling requests at the last minute.”
Securing additional manpower and equipment was important, and this was not an easy task post-Covid. Temporarily, QAS had to deploy its manpower and equipment across two airports, Hamad and Doha.
Collaboration and communication is important; QAS was involved in the slot allocation process with Qatar Airways and the local aviation authority, giving its approval for slots. Doha airport was activated and the separate Special Event Terminal handled the national teams away from other passengers.
QAS had a team in the Event Management Center to get real-time information about participating members movements.
Procurement requirements needed flexibility and innovation, extra staff had to be recruited and trained, which was not easy with Covid travel restrictions.
With its partners, QAS had five overseas recruitment drives, which led to nearly 6,000 interviews and over 2,000 new employees being on boarded.
From an IT perspective, over 4,000 additional assets were purchased, a new BRS system was introduced and PiTTurn was developed to digitalise turnarounds.
Jukowski said: “Our approach was to be innovative and to develop an operational concept that allowed us to deliver. The feedback we received from FIFA and the team managers was really good and they were really happy with the hassle-free experience.”
Many fans were staying in neighbouring countries and were flown in in the morning, staying a few hours then going home again. To manage this flights, there were limitations such as no baggage, which reduced manpower and equipment requirements.
The QAS team coordinated with landside authorities to monitor road congestion in real time to change bus routes as required, which meant there were no issues with getting personnel and other people where they needed to be on time.
The entire management team, including Jukowski, were deployed into active operations, which was a good experience.
Jukowski said: “I believe people are the biggest, most valuable asset. We have worked hard to engage our team and get them motivated but, believe me, some of the feedback from our team is that they did not have to be motivated, the magnitude of the event was motivating them every day.”
Over the 29 days of long hours, the QAS team served over 200 scheduled and private carriers, over 25,000 flight movements for the 32 games and 64 teams. The on-time performance was 99.4% with no major incident. More than 3.7 million passengers and 2.9 million pieces of baggage were handled, along with over 3,000 general aviation and business flights and over 9,000 high-profile guests.
“All of that so nearly 90,000 spectators could see Lionel Messi raising the World Cup on 18 December at the Lusail Stadium,” commented Jukowski.
