Qatar Airways to add Serbia and Poland to its network

Qatar Airways today announced further expansion to its European network with the launch of scheduled flights to Serbia and Poland by the end of the year taking the airline's coverage across the Continent to 32 destinations.

Above: Qatar Airways takes off for Serbia and Poland.

Services to the previously announced destination of Belgrade, capital of Serbia, have been confirmed for a 20 November start with a thrice-weekly schedule via Ankara.

Two weeks later, beginning 5 December, the airline will add the Polish capital Warsaw (above) to its rapidly-growing European network operating flights four-times-a-week.

News of the expansion follows this week’s announcement by Qatar Airways that it will begin daily flights to Chicago – the carrier’s fourth USA gateway – from April 10 next year.

Both the Belgrade and Warsaw routes will be operated from Qatar Airways’ Doha hub with an Airbus A320 configured in two classes – 12 seats in Business and 132 in Economy. Each seat features an interactive audio and video entertainment system offering hundreds of movies, TV programmes and music channels.

Following route launches to European capital cities in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Croatia this year, together with seven destinations on the Continent during 2011, Qatar Airways has given much attention to an expansion drive across Europe with a particular focus on eastern Europe.

Qatar Airways chief executive officer Akbar Al Baker said the addition of Poland and Serbia demonstrated the airline’s commitment to launch destinations that are largely underserved.

“Today we are flying to many parts of the world with a global network spanning 118 destinations with almost 25% of our route structure in Europe alone,” he said.

“Over the past two to three years we have identified great opportunities to probe markets across Europe that are largely underserved by full service international airlines. We are delighted to have subsequently started services to some of these destinations and are extremely pleased by their performance so far.

“I am sure both Belgrade (above) and Warsaw will prove to be just as successful as our other route start-ups providing travellers from both these cities and surrounding areas with great travel options to fly to Doha and conveniently onwards with Qatar Airways to cities across the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.

“We look forward to extend our Five Star service to both our new markets and open up more exciting travel opportunities for people from around the world,” added Al Baker.