breakingtravelnews.in
Qatar Airways today reaffirmed its commitment to India praising local authorities for helping it strengthen air links between the State of Qatar and cities across India with two new routes launched over the past few weeks. Qatar Airways celebrates the Amritsar flights with an outdoor gala dinner held in Jalandhar later this evening.
Akbar Al Baker, Chief Executive Officer, Qatar Airways said India remained and will continue to be, a key market for Qatar Airways as part of the airline’s long-term commitment to one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Qatar Airways’ maiden flight to the northern Indian state of Punjab landed in the holy city of Amritsar on October 12. Two weeks later, the airline launched scheduled flights to Goa, heralding the arrival of Qatar Airways as the only full-service scheduled global carrier to both destinations.
With Amritsar and Goa both served four-times-a-week from the airline’s Doha hub, Qatar Airways has increased capacity to 64 flights a week spread across 10 cities. These include daily non-stop flights between Doha and Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Trivandrum, Cochin and Kozhikode.
While addressing the media in Jalandhar, Mr Al Baker said, “India was the largest single market served by the airline. With 10 cities now served across India, Qatar Airways has built up a formidable network in this wonderful country.”
He said, “Qatar and India share a very special relationship and friendship and we applaud the local authorities for developing air links to this country over the years and help spread our award-winning Five Star service to more points. This has helped Qatar Airways facilitate trade and business between the two countries and beyond, as well as providing a vital air bridge connecting friends and family between India and rest of the world.”
Mr Al Baker said, “Our new Amritsar flights will greatly help commerce and industry in the city and the neighbouring business capitals of Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Chandigarh for the export of textiles, sports goods and food, manufactured and produced in Punjab to the Middle East and beyond.”
Mr Al Baker explained that the Amritsar route would cater for the well travelled Punjabi community worldwide. Punjabis have firmly established their home and work in cities across the world, yet have had very limited air access to Punjab for many years with the main option being to fly into Delhi and travel by road or train for the long journey to this part of north India.” “We are delighted to offer this new flight and make it more convenient and accessible for the travelling public,” he added.
Qatar Airways’ passengers flying from North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East to Doha have excellent onward late evening connections to Amritsar with the return flight being early morning departures. The airline is operating the route four-times-a-week non-stop from Qatar’s capital city using a two-class Airbus A320, with 12 seats in Business Class and 132 seats in Economy Class.