Qatar Airways said yesterday it will upgrade all its German services to Airbus A350s as more jets are delivered.
The carrier is capitalising on a near two-year lead over Germany’s Lufthansa in receiving the industry’s newest wide-body model.
Qatar deployed the A350 on Doha-Frankfurt trips earlier this year and will make the switch on its two daily Munich services in October and November, with Berlin to follow, said Frederic Gossot, country manager for Germany and Austria.
“Germany is a very important market, the second-biggest in terms of revenue in Europe after the UK,” Mr Gossot said yesteray. “Our business class has been growing strongly.”
While Qatar was the first A350 customer, Lufthansa will not get its first plane until November 2016. The Qatar A350s have 36 business berths, versus 22 on the Boeing 787-8s it has used for Frankfurt and Munich flights, so that the upgrade will add 784 premium seats a week to the two destinations.
Qatar is already at the 35-weekly flight limit of its air-service agreement with Germany, although it could choose to spread the services across five destinations rather than the current three.
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