With this route, the beautiful coastal city will become the third Vietnamese destination on the award-winning airline’s rapidly expanding global network.
The carrier will offer four-time weekly flights with a Boeing 787-8 aircraft, featuring 22 seats in Business Class and 232 seats in Economy Class.
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Qatar Airways will launch direct flights to the central city of Da Nang on December 19. (Photo: qatarairways.com) |
Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said “This new direct route demonstrates our commitment to expanding our presence in the Far East, a highly-important market for Qatar Airways."
Qatar Airways began direct services to HCM City in 2007, and launched its Hanoi service in 2010. Currently, the airline provides twice-daily direct flights to Vietnam’s capital city and 10 times weekly flights to HCM City.
In October 2017, Qatar Airways announced its interline partnership with Vietnamese low-cost airline Vietjet Air, allowing Qatar Airways’ passengers to travel to and from points in Vietnam not served directly by Qatar Airways using a single reservation across both airlines’ networks.
Da Nang expects the new air route will help promote trade, investment and tourism between the central region and the Middle East.
The number of travellers to the city has been increasing each year, with an average annual growth of 20.06 percent between 2013 and 2017.
It hosted 6.6 million tourists, including 1.67 million foreigners, last year. The figure was more than 4 million visitors in the first half of 2018, surging by almost 30 percent year-on-year. Notably, vacationers from the Republic of Korea shot up by 100 percent to account for half of the over 1.6 million foreign arrivals in the city during the period.
Da Nang is a popular tourist destination in central Vietnam. The online marketplace and hospitality service Airbnb announced a list of the world’s top 10 destinations for 2018, in which the city ranked fifth in booking surges of up to 255 percent.
Additionally, the Da Nang International Airport was ranked third amongst the top global airports in 2014, according to a survey by Dragon Air.
Source: VNA