oneworld

After registering solid growth in 2023, Qatar Airways is looking to expand further next year with new destinations and resumption flights, which will take the national carrier’s route network in excess of 170 destinations around the world. In 2024, Qatar Airways will add Venice, Italy in June, followed by Hamburg, Germany in July. These come on the back of recent expansion to the Qatar Airways winter schedule, which includes increased flight frequencies to key leisure destinations, including Amsterdam, Bangkok, Barcelona, Belgrade and Miami. Recently, Qatar Airways introduced an in-house application that enables its cabin crew to deliver personalised experiences to passengers. In the initial phase, the application offers real-time insights on flight information, and customer and service information. This allows cabin crew to view passengers’ profiles, including privilege club members and oneworld members, as well as all special service requests and preferences for a more personalised and integrated journey with the award-winning airline. The application also empowers them by providing access to up-to-date digital training materials. In the coming months, Qatar Airways will have reached the first milestone in this phase of digital transformation by providing cabin crew with more than 15,000 mobile devices. The airline will complete the roll-out of the new project in multiple stages, with plans to expand its scope to Hamad International Airport and overseas airports and lounges, integrating passengers’ unique itinerary and requirements across all touch-points.<br/>

Cathay Pacific Airways, grappling with flight cancellations over the holiday period that have frustrated passengers, acknowledged that pilots reaching or at their 12-month limit on flying hours had contributed to the problem. While there were “elevated sickness rates on certain days,” the airline’s director of flight operations said in a memo that many had hit or come close to the cap of 900 block hours on a rolling 12-month basis, which meant “there is much less flexibility around the deployment of pilots on Reserve and days off.” Cathay canceled 9% of the 126 planned departures from Hong Kong on Dec. 30, airport data showed. The airline axed another six flights Sunday. Its representatives did not respond to requests for comment outside business hours. “This has been an extremely challenging time for us,” Chris Kempis wrote in the memo to pilots on Saturday seen by Bloomberg News. He called the confluence of factors a “learning point for us and it’s on me to ensure that we don’t see a repeat of the same circumstances going forward.” Hong Kong has seen a resurgence of travel after more than three years of strict Covid-era restrictions. That has put a strain on the city’s flagship carrier to ramp up operations, after curtailing flights and cutting jobs amid the pandemic. The carrier is contending with a shortfall of cockpit crew. Pilots on staff now stand at 2,532, according to Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association data, a 35% drop from the end of 2019. Cathay operated nearly 8% more flights per day on average over the Christmas and New Year period compared to its typical schedule. Some pilots have had to accept multiple flight swaps and work on their guaranteed days off designed to give them appropriate time off to rest, Kempis wrote. “We are still very much in our rebuild phase,” he added. “We are on the road to achieving our full capacity and are already seeing the real benefits that come with that.”<br/>