Press Releases 2007
Qatar Airways Cargo signs global commitment to OAG Cargo's announcements and Airfreight Rates communications porta
6 September 2007
Qatar Airways, one of the world’s fastest growing airlines, has made a worldwide commitment to publish service announcements and airfreight rates to customers using OAG Cargo’s communications portal www.oagcargo.com.
The agreement was formally signed today by Qatar Airways Cargo and OAG Cargo at the Air Freight Asia 2007 conference and exhibition in Hong Kong.
By using OAG Cargo’s Inforwarding Announcements service, Qatar Airways Cargo gains instant access to an online community of 40,000+ registered freight forwarding users in 18 countries. Currently, over 220 airlines and cargo general sales agents use OAG Cargo to achieve ‘real time’ communication of services and schedules changes to customers in key markets worldwide.
Qatar Airways Cargo will also use OAG Cargo’s Air Freight Rates (AFRA) application for rates management and distribution. It plans to upload all of its rates onto the AFRA service by the end of the year. There are now over 4.2 million rates published on AFRA, posted by over 450 airlines. The service presently has more than 9,000 freight forwarding users.
Products and services developed by OAG Cargo provide a daily source of vital business information to the global air cargo community. In addition to Inforwarding Announcements and AFRA, the portal also offers air and road schedule data, route building, tracking and analysis solutions.
John Batten, General Manager Cargo at Qatar Airways, commented: “We recognise OAG Cargo as a proven and cost efficient way to keep our customers around the world informed about our growing network and services and to enable them to obtain easy access to accurate and timely rate information. We expect to see a strong return on this investment by getting ‘real time’ information into the market to both our existing freight forwarding customers and new customers.”
Batten continued, “We currently operate a modern fleet of 58 Airbus aircraft to 78 destinations worldwide and our fleet size will almost double to 110 aircraft by 2015. We have ordered 80 Airbus A350s in a deal worth more than US$16 billion, and 22 Boeing 777s, with deliveries of the latter beginning in November 2007. Our relationship with OAG will make a significant contribution to the success of our global expansion.”
Bart Jan Haasbeek, Director Key Accounts at OAG Cargo, added: “Qatar Airways’ cargo GSAs already use our portal in a number of locations around the world. Like a growing number of our customers, Qatar Airways Cargo’s corporate headquarters has chosen to use OAG Cargo as its preferred communications service to support its GSA partners and raise the airline’s profile further with our rapidly expanding freight forwarder community.”
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About OAG Cargo
OAG Cargo provides products and services to the global air cargo community. OAGcargo.com is the communications portal for the industry. Services include AFRA (Air Freight Rates database), Inforwarding Announcements, air and road schedule data, route building, tracking and analysis solutions and multi-media cargo schedule products.
About Qatar Airways Cargo
Doha-based Qatar Airways Cargo introduced a third aircraft into its freighter fleet of Airbus A300-600F in August 2007 and launched seven new cargo-only destinations.
With the addition of the third freighter, Qatar Airways Cargo has significantly increased the number of destinations it serves worldwide from 9 to 16 cities. During the past six months alone, the freighter network has been transformed radically with new destinations and a new-look cargo warehouse at Doha International Airport.
The new cargo-only destinations are Algiers, Tunis, Milan, Istanbul, Karachi, Colombo and Johor Bahru in Malaysia. They supplement other destinations already in the network – Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Khartoum, Dubai, Nairobi, Bangalore, Chennai, Lahore and Dhaka.