Qatar Airways expansion to new destinations will be decided on airline’s predictions on passenger flow, said airline chief Akbar al-Baker.
“At Qatar Airways, we will see where the highest demand of passenger flow is. We have IT systems in the company in which we get predictions of how the passengers flow is going to take place. 
“And those are the destinations that we will be restarting. Actually, those are destinations that we have stopped…we are going to go back to them. And then are also destinations in our network, which we will not operate at all, for the foreseeable future.”
In an interview with Qatar TV, al-Baker said, “We will add new destinations very similar to San Francisco, Seattle and Abuja, which we connected in the recent months. We are expanding still to many destinations…we have launched seven new destinations during the pandemic. No other airline has done that. 
“Today, we are the largest international carrier in long haul in the world and also we are the number one carrying cargo. 
“So what we are going to do is we are going to study each destination individually in two phases – one to restart the destinations we closed.” 
Al-Baker emphasised that “air travel will always be in demand.” 
“There will be a slowdown in air travel due the pandemic, but eventually the air travel will rebound. Unfortunately, it will take longer than previously expected. In the beginning, I was predicting that air travel will come back to pre-2019 levels, in 2 to 3 years time. 
“But now it will take longer. But if we get third, fourth and fifth wave in countries... that will push back the rebound of air travel.
“But air travel is part of our life. It is part of our DNA. It plays an important role in tourism, business and commerce and in the economies of the world,” al-Baker said, and noted “And by God’s grace, we will come out of the pandemic, the strongest airline.”