QATAR Airways, which is to add Hong Kong to its network on March 26, has announced that Nagpur will become the airline’s newest Indian destination this summer.
The non-stop scheduled service between its operational hub in Doha, and Nagpur in the Central Indian state of Maharashtra, will be operated with an Airbus A320 in a two-class configuration of 12 seats in Business Class and 132 in Economy. The airline currently operates 30 flights a week between Qatar and five cities across India. Delhi, Mumbai and Trivandrum are each served with seven flights a week; Hyderabad four times a week; and Cochin five times weekly.
Qatar Airways’ CEO, Akbar Al Baker, says that Nagpur is an unknown destination on the global map, but the route has great potential. “Nagpur is underserved both domestically and internationally by air carriers, but this extremely resource-rich region of Maharashtra offers tremendous business opportunities as it is also one of India’s largest inland container transport hubs.” Nagpur is creating an economic zone, and a new airport project is underway. “Our flights in and out of India have proved extremely successful and the addition of Nagpur will greatly enhance our product offering to the travelling public to and from India”, Al Baker added.
At least ten new routes will be added to the Qatar Airways’ network this year, according to the CEO. One is likely to be the previously announced service to Australia, for which a date has yet to be released. The airline will also begin flying to the United States this year.
From the summer season, which begins on March 26, the airline is adding capacity to a range of existing destinations. From four weekly services it will now fly daily to Manchester, while serving Athens seven times a week, up from the current five. It will increase connections to Frankfurt to nine flights a week, rising to 10 weekly services from next winter. It will run link to Paris 10 times a week over the summer and double daily over the winter. All three Qatar Airways flights to Madrid will operate non-stop, while Bangkok will now be connected twice daily, an increase of three flights from the current 11 each week. It will also add one more frequency to Osaka each week over the summer, making for five weekly flights, which will be increased to six services next winter.