Many airlines have grounded aircraft or reduced capacity owing to the novel coronavirus pandemic. And it has become increasingly difficult for those people, who are stranded in places away from home countries, to fly back. With more countries introducing international flight bans, these stranded people are in a great hurry to return home. Qatar Airways has good news for some of them.
Qatar Airways is still flying on routes that are still operational, &lsquocontinuing to keeping the skies open and getting as many people home as we possibly can in these challenging times,&rsquo the airlines said in a recent release.
According to the airline, their state-of-the-art aircraft are fitted with advanced air filter systems. The airlines is also following a strict bio-security screening of the staff for their operational flights.
As of March 24, the airlines has added 10,000 extra seats to its network flying extra flights to Paris, Perth and Dublin from Doha upgrading services to Frankfurt, London Heathrow and Perth with the addition of the Airbus A380 on those routes and is offering a provision of charter services to Europe and the US from Asia.
In its March 25 release, the company has said that its figures for the past seven days showed load factors of over 80 percent for flights to the UK, France and Germany, with a fall to 36 percent for outbound services from those countries, illustrating the demand for homeward travel.
Qatar Airways has flown more than 100,000 passengers home in the past seven days (as of March 25) while 72 percent of passengers carried on March 24 were nationals flying to their country of origin.
According to the company, by working with embassies around the world, the airline has operated one-off services from destinations such as Phnom Penh, Denpasar, Manila and Kuala Lumpur to Europe. More than 5,000 passengers were flown home by these services over the last week, a number that is expected to more than triple over the next week.
However, Qatar Airways has said that it is currently operating flights to 75 destinations (full list of operational flights available on this website), though this number may reduce as nations introduce tighter restrictions.