Ajay Jacob, Country Manager of Qatar Airways, talks to NOW! Jakarta about the airline’s superb performance in Indonesia, as well as other exciting plans for the market in the near future.
How positive is Qatar Airways’ standing in Indonesia compared to other countries in Southeast Asia?
The Southeast Asian market, including Indonesia, is an important and strong one for Qatar Airways, and overall it has been performing well with strong double-digit growth, so I’m happy to say we’re doing well and hope to continue to do so.
Qatar Airways, as a whole, is also performing well. In fact, we’ve once again won the much coveted Skytrax World Best Airline 2019 award this year. Qatar Airways made aviation history as we are the only airline in the world that has won this highly prestigious award five times. On top of that, during this year’s award, we also won World’s Best Business Class, World’s Best Business Class Seat and Best Airline in the Middle East.
Would you mind telling us your scale of operations within Indonesia and Southeast Asia as well?
For Indonesia, Qatar Airways is currently operating two key routes: Jakarta, which is the country’s capital and key business centre, as well as Bali, Indonesia’s most-famed holiday destination. We have a frequency of six flights a day from Indonesia, three flights from Jakarta and three flights from Bali.
For Southeast Asia, we do have a wide footprint covering eight countries namely, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam with 18 destinations. Qatar Airways plans to further grow our Southeast Asian network, and this year alone, we have added Davao in the Philippines and Langkawi in Malaysia as new destinations. So do watch this space as there will be more Southeast Asian destinations added to our network soon.
What do you the think are the main competitive advantages that Qatar Airways has to offer, specifically for Indonesian customers?
We maintain our edge as one of the world’s best airlines by constantly innovating and expanding. Qatar Airways currently flies to over 160 destination across six continents, and our growth remains unabated with increased frequencies to cater to increased travel demand and the launch of multiple new gateways this year including Lisbon (Portugal), Malta and Rabat (Morocco).
Qatar Airways operates over 250 state-of-the-air aircraft and we continue to heavily invest in new aircraft. In fact, we have an average of 1 new aircraft delivery every 10 days, so we can safely say we have a very young and modern fleet, and we have recently started operating the ultra-modern Airbus A350-900 between Jakarta and Doha which offer outstanding levels of comfort.
We also unveiled an enhanced Economy Class earlier this year, with an innovative 19-degree recline system, additional legroom, dual trays, 13.3-inch 4K widescreens and type C fast charging USB port. This is accompanied by a new in-flight dining experience ‘Quisine’, with all-new tableware, a menu offering more choices, as well as larger portions for main courses, appetisers and desserts. These are some of the enhancements coming to the economy class soon to ensure passengers from different classes are well taken care of.
Any exciting future plans/programmes/promotions from your airline that you’d like to share with our readers?
Qatar Airways is proud to be the official airline partner of the FIFA Club World Cup and we have just launched a very attractive promotion for the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019 between 11 to 21 December 2019. I would definitely urge all football fans to check out these attractive deals on our website
www.qatarairways.com/FCWC2019
Qatar Airways Jakarta Office
Menara BCA
Jalan M.H Thamrin No 1, Jakarta
T: +62 21 2358 0622
IG: @qatarairways
FB: @qatarairways
www.qatarairways.com
This article is originally from paper. Read NOW!Jakarta Magazine November 2019 issue “The Travel Issue”. Available at selected bookstores or SUBSCRIBE here.
