Qatar Airways Continues its Dramatic Network Expansion

Qatar Airways has used this year’s ITB Berlin travel event to announce the latest stage of its network growth. Having already opened services to four new destinations in Europe this year and plans to add four further destinations to its network - including Montreal in Canada - the carrier has now revealed three further routes from its Doha hub. From July 27 it will inaugurate a daily connection to Kolkata, bringing its Indian network to flights across 12 destinations; from September 14 a four-times weekly link to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria will be added; while from October 5 it will add flights to its third Nordic/Scandinavian city with a five-times a week schedule to Oslo in Norway, adding to its existing flights to Copenhagen and Stockholm.

Europe has been the main focus of Qatar Airways’ expansion in 2011 and these new flights will mean some amendments to their existing schedule. In January it launched a four-times weekly service from Doha to Bucharest with the aircraft continuing on to Budapest. It will now fly to Budapest directly and on a weekly basis from September 14, with the Bucharest aircraft now continuing on to Sofia instead.

Source: Qatar Airways

Alongside its new routes, highlighted in the table above, the Middle Eastern airline is to increase frequencies on a number of other routes which will see Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Manchester and Dar Es Salaam all operated double daily and Geneva, Seychelles and Copenhagen upgraded to a daily schedule.