The Hindu Business Line : Qatar Airways plans daily flights to Chennai

The Doha-based Qatar Airways plans to not only expand its Indian network by starting a daily flight to Chennai from March next year, but is also plans to operate a larger aircraft on flights currently being operated to Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram, thereby, almost doubling the number of seats on both the daily flights.

To Chennai

"We have decided to operate a daily flight to Chennai with an Airbus A-321 aircraft that can seat 177 passengers.

In addition, we will now fly the larger Airbus A-330 aircraft flights that we operate to both Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram. Besides, we will offer a daily flight to Kochi and Hyderabad, where we do not operate a daily service at present.

"The expansion in air services has been made possible as India and Qatar have just concluded a bilateral air services agreement that allows us to operate 10,800 air seats a week up from about 5,300 seats earlier," the airline Chief Executive Officer, Mr Akbar Al Baker, said at a press conference.

To Ahmedabad

The airline is also to launch a daily flight to Ahmedabad and a twice a week flight to Nagpur from next year.

In addition, the airline has also been given permission by the Government to operate 42 weekly flights till January 31 next year under the open sky policy. "India has been and remains a key market for the airline. We are continuously eying new opportunities here and also plan to go to destinations that others are not even thinking about at present," Mr Baker said when asked about other destinations to which the airline would like to operate flights.

The other plans of the airline include investing in a call centre here that would cater not only to calls from India but also the Far East.