Airlines inside and outside Africa are upbeat about the growing opportunities and huge potential in the continent’s aviation industry. Driving this growth is Qatar Airways as it adds more routes on the continent and scales up its operations by acquiring or forging partnerships with other airlines operating there.
Kano and Port Harcourt will join Qatar Airways’ Africa network, meaning the carrier will now serve four Nigerian cities. That’s twice as many as Emirates, one more than Turkish Airlines, and the same number as Ethiopian Airlines, by far Africa’s largest airline. The two additions bring to eight the number of African destinations added by Qatar Airways since the pandemic started. They join Abidjan, Abuja, Accra, Harare, Luanda, and Lusaka, while Cairo and Alexandria resumed following the end of the blockade.
Africa’s huge aviation potentials
Qatar Airways’ Vice-President for Africa, Hendrik Du Preez in an exclusive interview with AirInsight said: “There is huge potential across the continent for new routes.” Expect more announcements soon. He added, “Qatar Airways got ownership in a number of airlines globally. We are shareholders of the IAG group for instance. We have worked closely with Rwandair over the last couple of months. We announced the first part of the codeshare agreement which will cover 65 destinations on our network and their network. That is one of the areas that are underserved historically and for us to work closely with Rwandair to feed into their network and to have access to a broader network globally. It is what we are working on closely at this stage. We will be able to make more announcements, about how we are strengthening on it and building together.”
“It affected us but we never stopped flying and we started much quicker. That is the agility we have had. We are in good stead right now but most countries are re-opening their borders. A lot of countries are relaxing restrictions and with that, the…