Blockade failed to meet its purpose: Al Baker

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said the blockade imposed on Qatar by siege countries has failed to meet its purpose. He was speaking to media persons on the sidelines of an event organised to install a vast patriotic canvas displaying the iconic image of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in front of Qatar Airways’ corporate headquarters, yesterday.
“Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is a glorious person and this blockade is not working in our country, as at the end our Emir will be the victorious person. Other than the 18 destinations Qatar Airways is flying normally to all other destinations, as the matter of fact Qatar Airways is growing we have added two new destinations and next month we are going to add five more destinations, this blockade is actually failing the purpose for which it was created,” said Al Baker.
“If people think they can shake our confidence in the government by doing illegal acts this proves to everybody around the world that we have very high regard and by grace of Allah our Emir will be glorious exactly the way it is shown in the picture,” he added. He said Qatar Airways would go ahead with plans to buy a stake in American Airlines even though the US carrier is ending their code-share agreement.
“We are disappointed because it is not in the spirit of the One World alliance. However, we have other partners to work with us, we will continue. If this is to reduce or stop our operations to US we are not going to do so because we comply with the open sky policy, which is a very wise policy of US. We are business partners with US we have a lot of relations with US and people in our region have huge diaspora in US so we are only serving those passengers” he said.
“Our stock purchase request and filing is going ahead as normal. We had to clarify certain questions of the regulator, which we complied with. Once we get approval from the regulator we will buy the stocks we said we are going to buy,” added Al Baker.
Salam Al Shawa, Qatar Airways Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Corporate Communications told The Peninsula: “Today it’s a very proud moment for the staff of Qatar Airways including all Qatari pilots, the crew, airport staff and entire group of Qatar Airways, all turned up today to demonstrate that they are all behind our Emir.”
“Qatar Airways operations are normal in spite of the blockade and we have announced six new destinations and we will continue to prosper and the blockade has failed in stopping our progress,” she added.