Qatar Airways’ first ever passenger flight to Portugal landed at Lisbon Airport on Monday, June 24, 2019, as the airline adds to its rapidly expanding European network. Operated by a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, flight QR343 was greeted with a water cannon salute on arrival.

Present on board the inaugural flight to Lisbon was the Portuguese Ambassador to Qatar Ricardo Pracana and Qatar Airways chief commercial officer Simon Talling-Smith. They were met by VIPs including the Qatari Ambassador to Portugal Saad Ali Al-Muhannadi and the chief executive of Aeroportos de Portugal, Thierry Ligonnière.

The new daily direct services to Lisbon will be operated by the airline’s state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The carrier’s cargo arm offers a total capacity of 70 tonnes to and from Portugal each week, and a direct connection to destinations in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas via Doha. In addition, Qatar Airways Cargo has a huge presence in neighbouring Spain with 47 belly-hold cargo flights to Barcelona and Madrid, including seasonal flights to Malaga each week. The carrier also operates 10 weekly Boeing 777 and Airbus A330 freighters to Zaragoza, providing more than 950 tonnes of cargo capacity to customers.

Lisbon is the fourth new destination to be introduced by the airline this summer following the launch of flights to Izmir, Turkey, and Rabat, Morocco, in May; Malta at the beginning of June, and Davao, Philippines, on June 18. It plans to launch flights to Mogadishu, Somalia, on July 1 and Langkawi, Malaysia, on October 15.