Lufthansa is extending its route network to the Gulf region: as of 10th January 2006 it will be offering three weekly flights from Frankfurt to Doha, the capital of Qatar. The flights with a modern 221-seat Airbus A330 will leave each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 12.55 hrs. local time, and following a stopover in Kuwait, land following a journey of about seven hours in Doha at 22.10 hrs. local time.

The return flights on the following days will leave Doha at 00.10 hrs. and arrive in Frankfurt at 06.30 hrs in the morning. These times enable travellers to make optimal connections with flights to popular destinations in Europe und North America. Around 450,000 of the 800,000 inhabitants of Qatar live in the capital Doha.

According to the criteria of the World Bank, the country is one of the ten richest nations in the World. This wealth is based mainly on the country’s natural gas reserves and the production, export and further processing of natural gas and oil. Qatar possesses the largest continuous natural gas reserves in the world. With the inclusion of the flights to Doha, Lufthansa is consistently continuing its strategy of flights to the world’s oil markets. In addition to Doha, for example, the airline serves important oil markets like Houston/USA, Port Harcourt in Nigeria, Stavanger in Norway as well as Algiers und Tripoli in North Africa.