Qatar Airways will significantly expand its capacity across Europe starting February, with additional frequencies added to European cities from February, the carrier said in a press release.
According to the new plan, Barcelona and Manchester will become a double daily service, while Stockholm and Copenhagen will see services increase from a daily to ten and eleven weekly service respectively.”As a rapidly expanding global airline, it is crucial that we not only support new destination launches, but also add to the existing capacity across our network. This, in turn, provides passengers with an additional level of connectivity and choice when travelling the globe, facilitated by seamless transfers through our new five-star hub and home, Hamad International Airport,” Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said.
The additions to the Copenhagen and Stockholm routes will start from February 1 and 2 respectively, with double-daily flights to Manchester and Barcelona taking effect from February 15 and 16 respectively.
The additional frequencies will provide travelers with more convenient options when travelling to any of the 145 destinations around the globe served by Qatar Airways. Likewise, those passengers travelling from the Asia-Pacific region now have additional connection opportunities through to these European cities.
The Manchester to Doha service, which commenced in 2003, recently celebrated a decade of scheduled operations. With the addition of Edinburgh in May this year, Qatar Airways now serves a total of three destinations in the United Kingdom including London Heathrow, and is responding to growing demand by increasing its service to Manchester from ten to 14 flights per week.
Ken O’Toole, chief commercial officer at Manchester Airports Group (MAG) expressed his delight at the increase of Qatar Airways’ long-haul services from Manchester Airport, which, he said will provide increased choice to the 22 million passengers living close to Manchester Airport.
Starting February 16, Qatar Airways will also operate a double-daily direct scheduled service from Barcelona-El Prat Airport to Doha, adding four extra weekly flights to the existing ten. The airline first started flying to Spain in December 2005 and has seen continual growth in this market. With the extra capacity to Barcelona, the airline will offer a total of 24 weekly flights from Spain to Doha, including the ten weekly flights to and from Madrid.
With the launch of these additional frequencies, passengers from the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa can now take advantage of additional connections to these European cities via Doha.
In a related development, Qatar Airways brought forward the arrival date of the A380 to Bangkok to December 5 instead of January 2015 as initially scheduled, due to high demand for the state-of-the-art aircraft. “Bangkok is an ever-increasingly popular destination for holiday makers and Qatar Airways is pleased to be providing additional capacity on the route,” Al Baker said.
“We recently also introduced the Boeing 787 Dreamliner on the Phuket route, deploying two of the very latest aircraft on these popular routes,” he added.
The airline’s A380 superjumbo is operated in a tri-class configuration of First, Business and Economy cabins and includes a total of 517 seats. The first class cabin features eight seats on the upper deck in a 1-2-1 configuration. Each seat features a 90″ pitch with a fully lie-flat bed, 26″ HD in-flight entertainment screen and direct aisle access. The first class cabin also features exclusive spa-like bathrooms with luxurious amenities to ensure passengers enjoy a comfortable and leisurely flight.
Meanwhile, the Qatar Airways A380 business class cabin features 48 seats on the upper deck in a 1-2-1 configuration, each with an 80″ fully flat bed, 17″ HD in-flight entertainment screen and direct aisle access.
There are two economy class cabins on the Qatar Airways A380, with 56 seats on the upper deck in a 2-4-2 configuration, and 405 seats on the main deck in a 3-4-3 configuration. Each economy class seat is 18.5″ wide with a 32″ pitch and features a 10.6″ in-flight entertainment screen.
The upper deck also features a spacious inflight lounge offering premium passengers an escape from the typical airplane environment, which is unique to the A380. Another key feature of the service is its in-flight Wi-Fi connectivity available across all classes of travel. Qatar Airways has received three of its 13 A380s on order to date.
Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth in just 17 years of operation to the point where today it is flying a modern fleet of 142 aircraft to 145 key business and leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.
Source : Qatar News Agency
