DOHA: Gulf Air, Bahrain’s national carrier, yesterday marked 61 years of service to Qatar with a series of commercial initiatives tailored to the Qatari market. “Qatar has a special place in the history of Gulf Air as it was not only a founding member of the airline but also has the distinction of receiving our very first flight into Doha on March 24, 1950. And here we are today to commemorate this historic occasion, reinforcing our commitment to Qatar,” said Karim Makhlouf, Gulf Air Chief Commercial Officer. Since 1950, Gulf Air has already carried over nine million passengers to and from Doha and Bahrain. To celebrate its longstanding relationship with Qatar, Gulf Air has unveiled commercial initiatives, one of which is Falcon Corporate Plus, a package designed for corporate travellers, offering a range of benefits that include special price discounts and free upgrades from economy to Falcon Gold class. The airline is also coming up with an innovative programme for small and medium enterprises (SME’s) in Qatar in which both member organizations and their travelling employees earn miles that can be redeemed for free flights, upgrades, and others. Gulf Air is also offering a special promotion from September 15 to 29, whereby customers purchasing an airline ticket receive the second ticket half price on all Gulf Air flights. As the Middle East’s largest network carrier, Gulf Air is well positioned to connect Qatar to several key destinations in the region with nearly 700 flights per week. In addition, the carrier provides excellent connectivity to some key destinations such as Addis Ababa in Africa, Kabul in Afghanistan and the soon to be launched, Juba in South Sudan. Gulf Air’s Frequent Flyer programme has also undergone a major change; renamed ‘Falcon Flyer,’ the new programme offers members more attractive privileges and benefits such as bonus miles up to 250 percent, guaranteed seats, priority baggage handling, half miles redemption and family membership. Gulf Air already has 9000 Frequent Flyer members from Qatar. For families, Gulf Air will be introducing ‘Family First’ - a series of competitively priced packages for customers travelling with their spouses and kids, offering special privileges both on the ground and in the air. Most important of this suite of initiatives is the ‘Sky Hub’- world’s first full connectivity onboard Gulf Air’s long-haul flights offering high speed internet, 3G-4G mobile data speed connectivity, voice over the internet (VOIP) i.e. skype, streaming videos and the world’s first in-flight live TV via satellite. “Qatar has always been, and will be, an important market for us and I would like to thank our customers in Qatar for their continuous support to Gulf Air. With all these our new commercial initiatives and more to come, we look forward to getting even closer to our customers in Qatar,” said Makhlouf. Gulf Air started services to eight new destinations since January this year in Europe, Africa and the Middle East and has recently announced the launch of services to three more destinations- Rome, the capital of Italy from November 30, Entebbe in Uganda from Dec 5 and Juba, the capital of South Sudan from Feb 7, 2012. Makhlouf said Gulf Air added eight more Airbus A320 aircraft this year bringing the airline’s fleet to 34.the peninsula

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