QA to launch service to 17 new destinations by March next year

Qatar Airways plans to launch service to some 17 new destinations in the 2017 fiscal year, the national airline said in its ‘Annual Report 2016’, which was released here on Monday.

The new destinations to be launched before March 2017 include Auckland, New Zealand – offering what will be the world’s longest commercial flight – and to Helsinki, Finland, to complement its service to the northern capitals of Europe.Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker said the airline’s network strategy was determined by “relevance”.“We add cities that are relevant to our current customers, and where there are cultural, familiar and/or commercial links that are underserved. Case in point - our growth in the United States over the course of fiscal year 2016.”At the year’s start, Qatar Airways served seven cities in the United States – cities where it has bilateral codeshare or Oneworld-driven partnerships to extend its network deep into one of the busiest and most lucrative air travel markets in the world.By the end of the fiscal year, Qatar Airways had added Boston and Los Angeles, and added Atlanta at the start of fiscal 2017.These cities are highly relevant to the rest of the airline’s network, with strong ties around the world, and without convenient one-stop service to the places they need to go.“We saw the opportunity and took it, and the market response has been exceeding our expectations since the start of service,” al-Baker said."Qatar Airways remains deeply committed to its growth trajectory and has firm aircraft orders that will enable continued growth whilst at the same time providing fleet renewal keeping our company at the forefront of technology and enabling continuous product innovation," he said.The demand for air travel continues to grow across the globe albeit at differing rates in emerging and mature markets.The largest-growth markets in the near to medium term are expected to be on the African continent and India, whilst South America and China continue to have strong underlying growth.The introduction of 13 new destinations to the airline’s global network during fiscal 2016 further expanded Qatar Airways’ route network to more than 150 destinations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.Significantly, Qatar Airways launched flights to a number of high profile destinations during this period, including daily flights to Los Angeles in the United States and Sydney in Australia, further strengthening its overall route network relevancy to travellers world-wide.“Our connectivity to the United Kingdom also increased to 73 weekly flights with the addition of Birmingham, our fourth United Kingdom destination,” al-Baker said.The destinations Qatar Airways added during the 2016 fiscal year were; Abha, Amsterdam, Birmingham, Boston, Durban, Faisalabad, Los Angeles, Multan, Nagpur, Ras Al Khaimah, Sialkot, Sydney, and Zanzibar.Closer to home, the Doha-Dubai Shuttle was introduced, the first-of-its-kind flying between the two cities.