Qatar Airways to boost KL flights

Qatar Airways has announced a host of network capacity increases, including a boost in flights on its Kuala Lumpur route to twice daily, to be phased in from 1 March 2011.

An extra three weekly services from Kuala Lumpur will be added from 27 March, connecting the Malaysian capital to Doha twice a day.

This comes as part of Qatar Airways’ expansion plans connecting Asia to Europe through Doha. In Europe, where Qatar Airways is concentrating much of its expansion over the next two months with new routes to Bucharest, Budapest and Brussels having already launched and Stuttgart starting in March, the airline has also earmarked a number of capacity increases to and from existing destinations in its network.

The double daily Paris route will rise to 16 weekly services with an extra two flights a week, while Geneva capacity will increase to daily following the introduction of two new weekly flights. Qatar Airways’ Copenhagen route will go daily with one extra flight a week.

The airline’s route expansion also includes more flights in the MENA region, with three extra weekly services to the Omani capital Muscat with capacity rising to 24 flights each week and two extra services to the Tanzanian capital, Dar Es Salaam which will take frequency up to twice a day.

In addition to increased services to a host of destinations in Qatar Airways’ global network, daily services from Doha to Barcelona and to Bengaluru  in southern India will be upgraded from a narrow-body Airbus A320 aircraft to a wide-body A330.

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker said; “These capacity increases yet again demonstrate Qatar Airways’ commitment to building our route profiles in line with our strategy to offer passengers more travel options.

“With an average of more than one new aircraft being introduced into the fleet every month, Qatar Airways is looking to deploy the new capacity on existing routes while, at the same time launch new routes to join our ever-growing international network.

“From Europe and Africa to the Middle East and Asia, our network will see more capacity, improved schedules and, more importantly, more choice for our large passenger base and new clientele. There will be further route expansion announcements over the next few weeks.”

Qatar Airways currently operates a modern fleet of 94 aircraft from Doha to 97 cities across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North and South America. The airline plans to serve 120 destinations worldwide with a fleet of 120 aircraft by 2013.