Qatar Airways starts to reinstate 18 more destinations till July 15

New Delhi

Doha-based Qatar Airways has started to reinstate 18 more destinations worldwide from July 1-15.

Accordingly, by mid-July, the airline's network will expand to over 430 weekly flights servicing more than 65 destinations.

On Wednesday, the national carrier of the State of Qatar relaunched 11 more destinations, its largest single day of restarts.

The Persian Gulf carrier said it continues to work closely with governments around the world to resume commercial flights in line with entry restrictions.

"The airline is hopeful that further commercial flight restrictions will be eased throughout July, with the carrier planning to resume almost two thirds of its pre-COVID-19 network by the end of the month,"

"The airline expects its number of flights to almost double in July with close to 3,500 flights scheduled, compared to just under 2,100 in June."

Uniquely enough, the airline had maintained a global network that never fell below 30 destinations during these past few months.

Last month, another Gulf-based international air carrier Emirates Airline offered flights to an additional 16 cities and resumed transit through its Dubai hub.

Consequent to the addition, the airline has started operating flights to 29 cities from June 15.

This decision was taken after the UAE Federal government announced to lift restrictions on transit passenger services from June 15.

On its part, the Lufthansa Group will offer in the upcoming month over 40 per cent of their originally planned flight programme.

A total of over 380 aircraft by the Lufthansa Group carriers will be used for this purpose until October.

"This means that half of the Lufthansa Group's fleet is in the air again, 200 aircraft more than in June," the airline said on Monday.

Besides, the group expects that by end of October, over 90 per cent of all originally planned short- and medium-haul destinations and over 70 per cent of the Group's long-haul destinations will be served again.

Similarly, Virgin Atlantic has announced its plan to restart passenger flying to 17 additional destinations from August 2020.

The airline expects services from London's Heathrow to Hong Kong, New York's JFK, and Los Angeles to resume between 20th and 21st July, 2020.

Furthermore, it has planned flights from Delhi and Mumbai to Heathrow to start from September 2, 2020.

In India's case the Directorate General of Civil Aviation last month issued a circular extending the suspension on scheduled commercial international flight operations to and from India till July 15.

However, the Centre in the past has hinted at the prospects of 'bilateral bubble arrangements', which will allow some international operations between countries.

At present, domestic operations, charter flights and services under the Vande Bharat mission are allowed.