HIA expansion to be completed by Sept 2022: Al Baker

HIA Qatar

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker has said the Hamad International Airport (HIA) expansion wold be competed ahead of schedule, setting the date at September 2022.

He said: “At the moment we are one month ahead of schedule. We measure the performance of our contractors very closely and we make sure that we are not going to sleep even considering that we were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Al Baker was addressing a press conference on the occasion of the 54th AGM of the Arab Air Carriers’ Organisation (AACO) currently being held in Doha.

He said: “When it comes to the expansion of HIA, we are on target and on course to increase our capacity by 20 million passengers to cater to over 58 million passengers prior to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.”

World-class facility

Al Baker said: “It is a world-class facility that we are putting up and as a matter of fact, we don’t want to be number two anymore. We want to be always the best airport in the world. And, this is what we will deliver when we open the expansion that is supposed to be completed by September next year,” he said.

Speaking on Qatar Airways’ future plans, he said: “We will continue to expand. We have not stopped. We shrank to around 130 destinations, down from 180 destinations due to the CovidD-19 pandemic. We will again go back to 180 destinations in the not too distant future.”

He added: “Unfortunately, we had an issue where a lot of our Airbus A350 aircraft were grounded that put a lot of strain on our operations. This is why we have decided to operate Airbus A380 aircraft to fill the capacity gap we have.”