Doha – Najaf, the city in southern Iraq which is also the home of the Imam Ali Mosque has been included along with the two routes of Baghdad and Erbil which were launched during the early part of this year. The inclusion of Najaf has increased the services of Qatar airways in Iraq from eight flights to 12 flights in a week.
This Doha based airline will provide four non-stop flights per week and this will allow the travelers with greater choice about their destination to more than 100 places all over the world. These services will be provided by the airline and its hub.
The route of Najaf will have an Airbus A320 and there will be two class configurations where 12 seats will be in the business class and 132 seats in the economy class.
Though this city of Najaf is about 160 kilometers away from Baghdad, every year a lot of people visit this place for the Imam Ali shrine which is one of the most revered and holy of the Islamic sites all over the country.
There are a lot of constructions projects coming up in Najaf and those projects have made this city, one of the models of for the other areas ad provinces of Iraq. Najaf is providing huge potential and investment opportunities in the country.
Akbar Al Baker, the Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Airways has said that he is very happy with the extended services the airline is providing to Iraq. This is the market where the airline has launched services to two cities already.
He has further added that Iraq is proving to be an important market for the Qatar Airways. There are four weekly flights between Doha and Baghdad and Erbil, but they are pretty sure that Najaf will prove to be another popular destination for the passengers of this airline, especially people who are coming for the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa and obviously for those people who are returning to their homeland once in a while.
With the development of infrastructure at a major rate and the huge amount of tourist potential which is yet to be exploited, the airline is pretty excited about the introduction of flights to Najaf.
Al Baker has said that it is the trait of Qatar airways that, they always look for new avenues and new market potentials. With the launch of these flights to Najaf, the growing demand of travels and increasingly popular destination will help the airlines to meet these demands. The initiation of services to the three cities in Iraq within such a short period of time stands for the fact that, there is a huge value and importance of tourism and business and trade links between the two countries of Iraq and Qatar.
The positioning of Doha is quite crucial, because it can provide a lot of gateways o various destinations all over the world and the customers of the airlines from Najaf will have the opportunity of being served by Qatar Airways and its global network. The passengers will have no problem while travelling through the Doha hub and can reach places like Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Paris, New York, London and Washington and many more.
Within the 15 years of operation, Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth and at present it is operating a fleet of modern 111 aircrafts to more than 118 destinations all over the world and among those places, there are Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia Pacific, North and South America.
Since early 2012, Qatar Airways has launched flights to various places including Baku in Azerbaijan, Tbilisi in Georgia, Zagreb in Croatia, Kigali in Rwanda, Erbil and Baghdad in Iraq, Perth in Australia and Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
In the coming next months, this airways is looking forward to launch services to a lot of new routes and it will include places like Yangon and Myanmar from 3rd October, Belgrade, Serbia from 20th November, Maputo, Mozambique from 31st October, Warsaw, Poland from 5th December, Gassim, Saudi Arabia from 7th January and Chicago from 10th April 2013.
Source [Travel Daily News]