Reporting its full-year cargo stats for 2015, Qatar Airways Cargo remains the world’s third largest international air freight carrier – a position it moved up to mid-way through last year – with tonnage growing by 37.5 per cent in 2015. Highlighting the airline’s continued growth and expansion, year-on-year figures show that the carrier grew its freight tonnage from 1.1 million  tonnes in 2014 to 1.52 million tonnes in 2015.

The cargo carrier’s success also had an impact on Doha, with the hub seeing an increase of 29 per cent in cargo volumes – with exports increasing by 10 per cent and transit cargo at the hub increasing by 39 per cent in 2015.

“At a time when international air cargo traffic grew only 2.5 per cent in 2015, it makes us very proud that our year-on-year figures from 2014 to 2015 show that we have grown our tonnage by 37.5 per cent,” said Ulrich Ogiermann, Qatar Airways chief officer cargo. “We have achieved this phenomenal growth through a combination of fleet and network expansion, creative interline agreements and by deploying capacity on expanding or untapped markets.”

Further tonnage growth is expected for 2016 as more aircraft join the expanding fleet and more destinations are added to the route network. An A330F and a new B747F nose loader were received by the airline in December and an eighth A330F recently joined the fleet. Three more B777 freighters are scheduled to arrive by the end of 2016. The airline splits its cargo capacity across its freighters and passenger aircraft with 51 per cent of shipments carried on freighters compared to 49 per cent in the belly-hold.

The carrier’s network expansion for 2016 began in January with the launch of a new freighter destination to Dallas/Fort Worth, taking the airline’s number of freight destinations in the US to 13. In addition, a fourth-weekly freighter began serving Los Angeles on 19 January, complementing the new passenger service to the city, which commenced 1 January.

In March, Qatar Airways Cargo will launch three new freighter routes to Budapest, Prague and Ho Chi Minh. This will increase the airline’s freighter destinations in Europe to 14 and in Asia/Pacific to six. Qatar Airways Cargo will also provide belly-hold cargo capacity on the passenger flights that will commence to the new destinations of Boston, Birmingham, Adelaide and Atlanta on its network in the coming months.

Qatar Airways Cargo serves more than 50 exclusive freighter destinations alongside 150 key business and leisure destinations around the world with the belly holds of 177 passenger aircraft. The freighter fleet now includes eight A330Fs, eight B777 freighters and one B747-400 freighter.