Qatar Airways will operate three weekly flights to Abuja, Nigeria via Lagos from November 27th.
The city thus becomes the sixth new destination announced by the national carrier of Qatar since the start of the pandemic.
The Abuja service will be operated by a Boeing 787 Dreamliner featuring 22 seats in business and 232 seats in economy class.
Qatar Airways Group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “We are delighted to be launching flights to the capital of Nigeria.
“With the strong Nigerian diaspora in Europe, United States and the UK, we are thrilled to now be flying to Abuja in addition to our existing Lagos flights which started back in 2007.
“We look forward to working closely with our partners in Nigeria to steadily grow this route and support the recovery of tourism and trade in the region.”
By mid-December, Qatar Airways will operate over 65 weekly flights to 20 destinations in Africa, including Accra, Addis Ababa, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dar es Salaam, Djibouti, Durban, Entebbe, Johannesburg, Kigali, Kilimanjaro, Lagos, Luanda, Maputo, Mogadishu, Nairobi, Seychelles, Tunis, and Zanzibar.
Also today, Qatar Airways has unveiled a specially-branded Boeing 777 aircraft painted in a FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 livery, to mark two years to go until the tournament kicks off on November 21st.
The bespoke aircraft, which features distinctive FIFA World Cup, branding was hand-painted to commemorate the airline’s partnership with FIFA.
More aircraft in the Qatar Airways fleet will feature the livery and will visit several destinations in the network.
The Boeing 777-300ER will enter service on tomorrow operating flights QR095 and QR096 between Doha and Zurich.
Al Baker said: “We are tremendously excited to celebrate our partnership with FIFA and Qatar’s status as host of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 by introducing this unique aircraft to our fleet.
“As official partner and official airline of FIFA, we can feel the excitement building with two years to go until we will welcome the world to our beautiful country.”