Qatar Airways Celebrates 25 Years of Operations

Eric Odone, VP Sales Europe, Qatar Airways; Sofia Zacharaki, Deputy Greek Tourism Minister; Ioanna Papadopoulou, Communications & Marketing Director, Athens International Airport; and Mate Hoffmann, Regional Manager Southern Europe, Qatar Airways.

Qatar Airways recently celebrated its 25-year anniversary of operations during an event at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, held in cooperation with Athens International Airport (AIA).

“Since its launch of services at our airport in 2005, Qatar Airways has been one of our most precious airline partners, with a remarkable contribution to the connectivity of our airport, our city and our country,” AIA Communications and Marketing Ioanna Papadopoulou said.

She highlighted that through the continuous Athens – Doha daily services, Qatar Airways demonstrated, “especially in the last couple of very difficult years”, outstanding resilience and trust in the Athens market and keeps offering its clients an unparalleled flight product.

AIA Communications & Marketing Director Ioanna Papadopoulou.

Qatar Airways never stopped flying throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and focused on taking stranded passengers home on scheduled and charter flights. The airline was one of the few carriers operating flights to and from Greece during the pandemic.

“We would like to extend our warmest wishes to our precious airline-partner for further development in the Athens market and reconfirm our commitment to the continuation of our close and successful cooperation for the next 25 years – and many more,” Papadopoulou added.

In the most difficult period ever in global airline history, Qatar Airways won ‘Airline of the Year’ for a record-breaking seventh time in the Skytrax World Airline Awards. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, Qatar Airways grown to more than 150 destinations in 2022.

The airline also played an instrumental role repatriating seafarers during the pandemic. Since 2020, Qatar Airways has carried more than 500,000 mariners for both repatriations and crew changes. In addition, the airline operated more than 130 charters carrying over 35,000 workers.

European commercial reorganization

Along with celebrating the 25th anniversary of the airline in Athens, Qatar Airways also shared the new European Cluster commercial reorganization unveiled this year.

Aiming to deliver the highest quality of service to passengers and trade partners, Qatar Airways’ new model sees Europe split into five regions with a hub servicing multiple countries. Italy will serve as the hub for the Southern Europe region. This region will cover online markets in Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey. As well, offline markets in Slovenia, Malta, and North Macedonia will be covered under this structure in Southern Europe.