Speaking after the 54th Annual General Meeting of Arab Air Carriers Organisation (AACO) at the Sheraton Grand Doha yesterday al-Baker said, “When it comes to the preparation for Hamad International, we are on target. We are going to increase the capacity (annual) of the airport by 20mn passengers – to cater to over 58mn passengers. It is a world class facility that we are putting up- and as a matter of fact we don’t want to be number two anymore.”
“We always want to be the best airport in the world. And this is exactly what we are aiming for… and this is what we will deliver.”
Al-Baker noted, “We measure the performance of our contractors very closely, and we make sure that we are not going to slip – even considering that we were impacted by Covid-19.”
Hamad International Airport (HIA), which is the national airline’s home and hub, was recently announced as the ‘World’s Best Airport’ in the Skytrax 2021 World Airport Awards.
HIA has been steadily rising in the ‘World's Best Airports’ rankings since the start of its operations in 2014.
In response to the ongoing pandemic, HIA acquired and implemented the latest technologies to optimise passenger and employee safety, including the use of disinfectant robots, advanced thermal screening helmets and UV disinfection tunnels for checked-in passenger luggage (departing, arriving and transferring).
This is in addition to the installation of vending machines with PPE across key passenger touchpoints throughout the terminal.
In its ‘2021 Annual Report’ Qatar Airways Group said, “HIA’s agile and innovative approach during a truly challenging year ensured it remained operational throughout the pandemic and helped millions of passengers reach home safely.
Al-Baker also said Qatar Airways kept on operating during the pandemic that hit the airline very hard.
“We have since increased our frequencies gradually…re-recruited a lot of people that we have laid off."
In terms of fuel price hike, he said, “We are fully prepared, whatever be the circumstance. We at Qatar Airways are good at taking the right decisions and going after the right opportunities and we are one of the few airlines, which are performing very well.”
In terms of airline expansion, al-Baker said, “We will keep on expanding…we are not going to stop. We shrank to a certain extent (post-Covid) and are now operating to around 130 destinations, down from 180 earlier. We will be going to the 180 destinations' mark in the not so distant future.
“Unfortunately, we have an issue, where a lot of our Airbus A350s are grounded and this is putting strain on the airline. This is why we are planning to operate our A380s to fill the capacity left behind.”
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