QATAR AIRWAYS TO RESUME MAPUTO FLIGHTS

Qatar Airways has announced that it will resume flights between Doha and Maputo on 21 August.The airline suspended the Doha-Maputo route for what it described as “operational reasons” on 1 May. Despite skepticism in some of the Mozambican press, it was clearly always the intention of Qatar Airways to reactivate the route. Anyone attempting to book a Maputo-Doha flight online would have found that no flights were available in May, June or July – but bookings could be made as from late August.There will be three flights a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The main difference from the flights that operated between October 2012 and April this year, is that Qatar Airways is putting one of its Boeing 787 “Dreamliners” on the route.The flights go via Johannesburg, but passengers who boarded in Maputo will not be obliged to leave the plane in Johannesburg. According to a Qatar Airways release published in the Mozambican press on Tuesday, the “Dreamliner” has one of the spacious cabins of any commercial airliner, with an on-board entertainment system of over 2,000 options. Depending on the number of classes (first, business and economy) on any flight, a Dreamliner can cater for between 234 and 296 passengers. The Deputy Chairperson of Qatar Airways for Africa, Jared Lee, cited in the release, declared “Mozambique is an important market, and we are very pleased with the resumption of operations to Maputo”.