Qatar Airways Cargo, the freighter arm of leading five-star airline Qatar Airways, has launched non-stop flights between the airline's operational hub of Doha and Sialkot in north east Pakistan.

The new service, which began today (October 27) will operate every Monday using an Airbus A300-600 freighter and will capitalise on the city's strong reputation for exporting high quality medical, sporting and leather goods.

Sialkot, which is in Pakistan's Punjab province and one of the country's most populated cities, is also famous for producing and exporting textiles owing to its close proximity to Kashmir.

With such a high volume of products being exported from the city, Qatar Airways Cargo saw the huge potential in operating a direct cargo service into Sialkot district.

The addition of this new route takes the freighter network of Qatar Airways Cargo up to 20 destinations worldwide, including Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan.

Other destinations from Doha are Algiers, Amsterdam, Bahrain, Chennai, Colombo, Dhaka, Dubai, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Khartoum, Luxembourg, Milan, Nairobi, Sanaa, Tunis and Zaragoza.

Qatar Airways chief executive officer Akbar Al Baker said with the impressive growth of the passenger business over the years, there was now a concerted effort to build the airline's cargo operations.

'This is the second new freighter service launched by Qatar Airways Cargo in the space of just two months having begun cargo flights to the Spanish city of Zaragoza in September,' he said.

'We now have plans to grow the number of freighters operated by Qatar Airways which will allow us to carry on adding to what is an already impressive international cargo network.'

'We have a strong commitment to strengthen our cargo network as we explore diverse and exciting cities such as Sialkot, which has an established export business in the textile, surgical and sporting goods industries,' Al Baker noted.

'Sialkot is a perfect addition to the airline's already strong Pakistan network, where we have two other cargo and four passenger routes,' he added.-TradeArabia News Service