Africa continues to play an important part in Qatar Airways’ global network expansion strategy and the airline currently operates 140 flights per week to 19 African gateways.
Over a twelve-month period, preliminary data shows a growth rate of 5.1 percent year over year, with both international and domestic traffic posting strong growth rates of 5.8 percent and 4.5 percent respectively.
Every month Routesonline provides an update on the current schedules of five latest aircraft programmes, highlighting the routes the types are being deployed upon.
The new ‘Pharma Express’ route will see an Airbus A330-200F operate between Brussels and Basel and then on to Doha on a twice weekly basis from January 28, 2015 with flights every Wednesday and Saturday.
During the inauguration ceremony for the Qatar Airways A350XWB, the GCEO of the airline, Mr Akbar Al Baker responded to questions including those relating to future routes for the A350.
With the addition of the city of Amsterdam, the total number of European destinations offered by Qatar Airways will grow to 34 – just under a quarter of the airline’s total route map. The carrier has witnessed rapid growth in its 17 years of operation and now operates a fleet of 146 aircraft to 146 business and leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.
With the additional flights, Qatar Airways will now have four early morning departures connecting via Doha to Europe and the Americas and four early evening departures connecting to flights in the Asia Pacific region. A mix of morning and evening flights means convenient connections for passengers from Salalah to key markets in the Qatar Airways’ route network of 146 destinations.
The frequency growth will see Qatar Airways boost capacity to Barcelona by 32.1 per cent in 2015, while total capacity into Spain will increase 30.4 per cent to almost 360,000 seats in each direction. According to MIDT data, the airline carried an estimated 458,000 passengers on its flights to and from Spain last year.
It appears that Qatar Airways will inaugurate scheduled passenger flights with its new Airbus A350XWB from January 15, 2015 on the Doha – Frankfurt route. The Gulf carrier, the launch customer for the next-generation airliner, has already revealed the German city would be the first destination for the aircraft, but it has yet to confirm when the flights will launch.
The new flight will launch from March 29, 2015 and will introduce a morning rotation to further support local and transfer traffic on the route. It will be operated using an Airbus A320 configured with 12 Business Class and 132 Economy seats.
After the announcement earlier this year, Qatar Airways have finally welcomed the first of its ten Airbus A380 Aircraft on order, at a ceremony in Hamburg earlier today.
The network growth is being facilitated by the continuous growth of the airline’s fleet and the new non-stop Doha - Cape Town route will be operated by one of the carrier’s new Boeing 787 Dreamliners which are configured in a two-class arrangement with 22 Business Class and 232 Economy Class seats.
Qatar Airways will boost capacity on routes from Doha’s Hamad International Airport to Madrid and Perth through increased frequencies on the route to Europe and the permanent deployment of a larger capacity airliner on the Australian link.
Under the revised timetable, Qatar Airways will continue to operate four rotations per week on the Doha – Budapest – Zagreb linked flight routing using an Airbus A321, but every Monday, Friday and Saturday will operate separate flights to both Budapest and Zagreb.
The first of 13 aircraft it has on order, Qatar Airways is set to receive three A380 aircraft in quick succession this summer and the new aircraft will commence operations on the ‘QR003’ and ‘QR004’ rotations to and from London Heathrow.
Qatar Airways is to introduce a non-stop link to the popular Indonesian leisure destination of Bali this summer. The direct link to Denpasar will reduce journey times to a destination that has seen growing demand from across the Qatar Airways network over the past couple of years.
Bordered by Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, Djibouti has an economy that is largely concentrated in the service sector and the country has limited international air services – a void Qatar Airways hopes to fill with its expanding international network of routes via its Doha hub.
