Qatar Airways to debut Canadian route

Qatar Airways is set to make its debut in Canada with the launch of scheduled flights to Montreal commencing on 29 June.Canada’s second largest city will be served with three-flights-a-week on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays using the airline’s flagship Boeing 777-200 Long Range aircraft. The non-stop journey from the airline’s hub in Doha to Montreal’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport will be a total flying time of 13 hrs 20 minutes. The destination marks Qatar Airways’ first foray into Canada following a series of bilateral negotiations in Doha last year, when the airline secured rights to fly passenger and cargo flights to the country. The province of Quebec’s capital city becomes the airline’s fourth destination in North America. The award-winning airline, ranked Five Star for service, excellence and high standards, currently operates daily flights to New York, Washington and Houston.Qatar Airways is the first Gulf carrier to operate flights to Montreal, a city renowned for its festivals and arts scene, being home to the well established international dance troupe Cirque du Soleil, the IMAX cinemas, aircraft manufacturing company Bombardier and top-ranked universities world-wide, McGill and Concordia. “According to the government agency Export Development Canada, there are more than 1,500 Canadian companies doing business in the Gulf and Qatar, in particular, is one of Canada’s largest trading partners in the Middle East,” said Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker.”With the oil and gas industry being a key connection that naturally aligns us, we hope that as soon as our thrice-weekly service is well-established and boosts the Qatari and Canadian economy to receive additional traffic rights for a daily operation to Montreal.”Montreal is one of the most sought after destinations in the world and we hope to have paved the way for expanded capacity into Canada and operate to additional cities in the future. There is natural demand for travel from many parts of our international network to Canada, and thanks to our scheduling we are able to offer convenient connections over Doha,” he added.The Boeing 777 on the Montreal route has a two-class operation, offering 42 seats in Business in a 2-2-2 cabin layout, with a seat pitch of 78 inches.In Economy, the Boeing 777 offers 217 seats in a 3-3-3 configuration with a pitch of up to 34-inches.