Qatar Airways to serve Manchester daily

The airline currently operates four scheduled flights a week between Doha, capital of the State of Qatar, and Manchester. Capacity is being increased to a fifth weekly service from February 11, 2006, rising to a daily service at the beginning of the Summer 2006 season on March 26.

The additional Manchester services takes to 28 the number of weekly flights between Qatar and the UK - twice-daily to London Heathrow and daily to London Gatwick.

Manchester is home to excellent shopping, restaurants, nightlife and one of the world's biggest football clubs Manchester United, as well as being gateway to fabulous natural parks and tourist destinations such as the Lake District and Wales.

Qatar Airways will continue operating a widebody Airbus A330-200 on the route, offering a two-class configuration of up to 24 seats in Business Class and 259 seats in Economy.

The aircraft features Qatar Airways' award-winning Audio Video On Demand inflight entertainment system, allowing passengers in both classes to choose from an extensive list of international new release films and short programmes to view on their individual TV screens, and listen to an extensive list of more than 250 CDs and radio channels.

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker said the additional Manchester services would provide passengers with greater choice of flights and a wider network of exciting destinations to connect to over Doha.

"We are already enjoying excellent passenger loads to Manchester from the Middle East and our destinations in the Indian subcontinent, Far East and South Africa via Doha," said Al Baker.

"All our UK routes covering Manchester, London Heathrow and London Gatwick are performing extremely well so it was only a matter of time that we step up capacity to meet the rising demand."

"These additional flights to Manchester are good news for the travelling public and we look forward to other opportunities to expand capacity even further across the UK during 2006."

Qatar Airways currently operates scheduled flights from its Doha hub to 68 destinations across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Indian subcontinent and the Far East. Together with its codeshare partners, the airline serves more than 80 destinations worldwide.

Last month, Qatar Airways launched flights to Nairobi, followed on December 2 by new services to Madrid. Starting on December 15, Qatar Airways will begin scheduled flights to Berlin - its third gateway city in Germany.

Qatar Airways operates a modern fleet of 42 all-Airbus aircraft, which will almost triple in size to 110 jets by 2015. The airline recently announced plans to acquire up to 80 aircraft comprising 60 of the new generation A350s and 20 Boeing 777s worth a total US$15.2 billion.

The airline is one of the launch customers of the twin-deck Airbus A380 'super jumbos' with four aircraft on order and scheduled for delivery from 2009 to coincide with the opening of the New Doha International Airport. (www.ndiaproject.com)

Qatar Airways is one of four airlines in the world ranked Five Star by Skytrax, the independent aviation industry monitoring agency. Skytrax also named Qatar Airways' cabin crew as Best in the Middle East for the third year running and fifth best in the world following a survey of more than 12 million passengers worldwide, while the airline also maintained its position as among the world's top 10 carriers.

For further information on the New Doha International Airport, web users can log onto www.ndiaproject.com