Qatar Airways began its global expansion plan for 2010 when it began regularly scheduled flights to Bengaluru, India (formerly Bangalore) on Wednesday. Flight QR226 landed in the southern city of Bengaluru early Tuesday morning after a non-stop flight from Doha, Qatar. Bengaluru, the country’s IT capital, sometimes referred to as India’s Silicon Valley, is the first of several new route launches planned for 2010. Flights to Copenhagen will start on March 30th, Ankara on April 5th, Tokyo on April 26th, Barcelona on June 7th, and Sydney at a date to be announced later.
The addition of daily flights to Bangaluru brings the number of weekly flight services to India to 71. Eleven key cities are served: Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad,, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Cochin, Kozhikode, Goa, and Amritsar. Bengaluru is home to India’s biggest software industry and also has some of the country’s most prestigious universities and research institutions, and many public sector companies in the telecommunications, aerospace, and defense industries.
