Qatar Air CEO sees growth despite Mideast spat

Qatar Airways’ chief executive said Tuesday the carrier will post a loss this year because four other Arab countries have severed land, air and sea links with Qatar.

Akbar al-Baker said the boycott on Qatar’s flagship airline flying to neighboring Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt since last summer has forced it to fly longer routes through Turkey and Iran has hit the company’s bottom line, but not its expansion plans.

“We have increased maintenance costs because we are flying longer routes, we have more fuel consumption, so the cost to the airline is rising and I have already stated that the airline will post a loss this year due to the blockade, but this doesn’t mean that we are going to shrink,” al-Baker said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We will keep on expanding and growing the company.”

Speaking in the Australian capital Canberra where Qatar Airways has become the first international airline to offer daily flights, al-Baker said his state-owned airline might know by April the size of the loss. He could not give a timeline on when the new routes would make up for markets lost.

“It all depends on how quick we will be able to mature the new destinations that we are operating instead of the destinations that were taken away from us during the blockade,” al-Baker said. “The world is not only these four blockading countries. The world is very large and we are always looking at new opportunities which we have been doing very successfully. We will grow everywhere, not only by ... new destinations but also grow frequencies,” he added. (AP)