Qatar Airways is set to begin three-flights-a-week to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital and its largest city, from September 18, 2013.
The new service from Doha to Addis Ababa will be operated with an Airbus A320 in a two-class configuration of 132 seats in economy and 12 in business class.
“Ethiopia is fast emerging as a growing economic centre, forming strong trade links with Europe, USA and Asia Pacific,” said Qatar Airways chief executive officer Akbar al-Baker.
“As a route, the country has great potential when linked up with key markets in Europe, Americas and other parts of the world. We are pleased to be reinforcing our presence in Africa with the addition of scheduled flights to Addis Ababa, allowing us to further expand our business on the African continent.”
Addis Ababa joins a rapidly growing African network that Qatar Airways serves, amongst 19 other routes in North, East, West and Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the last 24 months the airline added Benghazi (Libya); Entebbe (Uganda); Kigali (Rwanda); Tripoli (Libya) – re-launched; (Kilimanjaro (Tanzania); and Maputo (Mozambique) in  Africa  to its global route network.
“Ethiopia is known for its thriving industries including coffee production, agricultural commodity exports and livestock production,” al-Baker said.
“There is clearly demand and huge potential to and from Ethiopia, one of the many underserved markets across Africa. As a global network carrier we are able to fulfill the needs of the travelling public from such markets and for those wanting to travel there from destinations that we serve around the world.”  
The flight to Addis Ababa will be on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
In addition to Addis Ababa, over the next few months, the network will expand with the addition of further destinations such as  Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, Chengdu, China, Clark International Airport, Philippines and Philadelphia, USA .