Qatar Airways has used this year’s Arabian Travel Market to announce the latest stage of its network growth. Having already opened services to five new destinations this year and outlined plans to add six further destinations to its network - including Montreal in Canada - the carrier has now revealed three further routes from its Doha hub, adding four more cities to its network.

From November 2 it will introduce its first new route to Africa for almost four years with a daily connection to the Ugandan capital Entebbe. The country is fast emerging as a regional trading centre with links to Europe and the Far East, but currently has limited air services outside of the continent and Qatar Airways believes its global network will enable it to connect the destination on a global scale. According to the latest schedule data, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Turkish Airlines (THY) offer flights to London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Istanbul respectively, while Emirates Airline has links to Dubai via Addis Ababa.

Four weeks later, on November 30, Qatar Airways will expand into Central Asia introducing daily non-stop flights to Baku which continue onto Tbilisi, the capital cities of Azerbaijan and Georgia respectively. Qatar Airways will be the only full-service Gulf carrier flying to the oil-rich city of Baku, becoming a natural fit for the airline linking up with the State of Qatar, the energy capital of the Middle East. Located on the Caspian Sea, the walled city of Baku, whose largest industry is petroleum, has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Tbilisi is a significant industrial, social and cultural hub, emerging as an important transit route for global energy and trade projects and is located strategically at the crossroads between Europe and Asia lying along the historic Silk Road routes.

Both these new routes will be served by an Airbus A320 in a two-class configuration of 12 seats in Business Class and 132 in Economy. Speaking at the formal launch of these new routes on the opening day of the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Akbar Al Baker, Chief Executive Officer, Qatar Airways, highlighted that all three of these markets are largely underserved by international carriers.

“But there is clearly demand and huge potential and, as a network global carrier, we are able to fulfil the needs of the travelling public from these three countries and for those wanting to travel there from markets we serve around the world,” he added.

In January this year, the airline embarked on the first phase of its 2011 expansion programme launching flights to Bucharest, Budapest and Brussels during a single month alone. All three of these European routes had little or no capacity from the Middle East and their launch fitted nicely into the airline's set strategy, explained Akbar Al Baker. With the start of flights to Stuttgart in March and the Syrian city of Aleppo becoming the carrier’s 100th destination last month, Qatar Airways is gearing up for a busy summer ahead of further launches and capacity increases to a number of existing destinations.

These new routes complement a raft of capacity increases with additional flights across the airline’s global network during the summer schedules, including Guangzhou, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Manchester, Dar Es Salaam, Geneva, Copenhagen, Istanbul and Paris. “As we take delivery of more aircraft, we will quickly induct them into service and constantly look at new opportunities to give the travelling public more travel options, more choice and more flexibility,” added Akbar Al Baker.

Qatar Airways is to also strengthen its position in Saudi Arabia, introducing its first flights to the Holy City of Medina on July 14 and increasing frequencies into the country from 35 to 60 flights per week. The carrier currently already serves three destinations in the country and carried an estimated 68,000 O&D passengers on its flights between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the past 12 months.

It will initially offer four services per week to Medina, the second holiest city of Islam after Mecca and home to the three oldest mosques in the Islamic religion, but expects to boost capacity to a daily schedule in the future. These flights will be operated with an Airbus A320 in a two-class configuration with 12 seats in First Class and 132 in Economy.

Qatar Airways currently accounts for just a 2.4 per cent share of the international traffic in Saudi Arabia, a figure that it expects to grow. “Saudi Arabia is the largest of the GCC countries and a natural market for Qatar Airways to step up its presence,” said Akbar Al Baker. With a particularly strong demand for religious tourism, Qatar believes its strong international network with links across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America, via its Doha hub, positions it well to bring traffic into the country.

Interestingly, alongside the 68,000 passengers flying to/from Qatar, approximately a further 427,000 passengers fly with Qatar Airways between Saudi Arabia and other international destinations with the largest markets being India, Philippines, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Indonesia, as shown in the table below.

Qatar Airways currently offers daily services to Saudi Arabia’s two largest cities – the capital Riyadh and Red Sea port city of Jeddah, as well as 21 flights per week to Dammam, the capital of the country’s oil-rich Eastern Province and a key commercial hub and port in the Kingdom. However, from June 1 it will increase flights to Riyadh and Jeddah to double daily to keep up with demand in these fast growing cities and to support strong traffic using Jeddah as the main entry point for pilgrims making the Hajj pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. An additional daily flight will also be offered to Dammam, bringing weekly frequencies to 28.

Qatar Airways is also to modify its schedules on three other routes across its network, including standardising its flights to Bangkok on the Boeing 777-300ER, increasing capacity to Vietnam and introducing an additional two weekly rotations to Cairo. From May 21 it will upgrade its four times weekly service from Doha to Hanoi and three times weekly link to Ho Chi Minh to a 777-300ER, replacing smaller Airbus A330-200/300s on the routes. These flights operate via Bangkok and will now mean that each of its three daily flights from Doha will now be flown by the Boeing jet. Meanwhile, on the Doha – Cairo route, Qatar Airways will introduce an additional two weekly rotations from July 2. These will be flown by A320s and will complement the airline’s existing daily service, which is operated by a 777.