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Qatar Airways will soon place a sizeable order for wide-body jets to underpin its longer-term growth plans, the airline's CCO said Monday. "To secure the growth of tomorrow by continuing to have a very strong and the best fleet in the industry, our CEO is working on the RFP (request for proposal) with the aircraft manufacturer to place a big order soon," CCO Thierry Antinori said. He added the contract would be announced soon, declining to say whether it will be signed with Airbus, Boeing, or under a split deal with both. At the Farnborough air show in July last year, CEO Badr al Meer said a large aircraft order was under consideration. CCO Antinori told Reuters that the Qatari airline had seen above-market growth in passenger numbers from April 2024 until January this year, up 9% throughout its network, up 14% in Europe and up 12% in Germany.<br/>

Qatar Airways is expanding in Berlin but will wait at least another year before adding further German destinations due to sluggish plane deliveries, the company's CCO said on Tuesday. "A couple of destinations are on our radar," CCO Thierry Antinori said in Berlin on the sidelines of the ITB travel fair, one of the industry's biggest gatherings, when asked about the airline's future plans in Germany. "But we won't have movement this year and probably not next year either," Antinori said, adding that this was down to aircraft deliveries. "We already have plans for all the deliveries we will receive over the next two years," the executive said. Also on Tuesday, Qatar Airways announced that it would increase the frequency of its flights connecting Berlin and Doha to three times daily from July this year. This was in response to rising demand: In 2024, the airline saw a 16% increase in passenger traffic in Germany compared to the previous year, it said in a statement.<br/>