With peak travel season upon us and with thousands of fans from around the world travelling to the region for the Middle East's first football World Cup, delays and postponements will be inevitable.
To ensure fans do not miss a moment of action from the World Cup matches, a number of global airlines are offering live sporting action on board.
Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways will all offer Sport 24 and Sport 24 Extra, the live sports television channels which will show all the matches from Qatar. Besides the regional airlines, the channels are also available on Aeromexico, American Airlines, JetBlue, Singapore Airlines, Turkish Airlines and Vistara.
The world’s biggest football tournament kicks off on Sunday.
Besides 200 of its aircraft being equipped with live TV, Emirates said Sport 24 will also be available in its A380 onboard lounges as well as its dedicated airport lounges around the world. The airline's inflight system ice was recently awarded the Global Passenger Choice Award for Best Entertainment at Apex 2023, the triennial fair for the global aviation industry. It also won World's Best Inflight Entertainment for the 17th consecutive time at Skytrax 2022.
About 1.5 million fans, a little more than half the population of Qatar, are expected to descend upon the country and travellers from the Middle East look set to dominate the Doha stands.
According to data from digital travel marketing company Sojern released in October, flight tickets issued in the region went up 5,772 per cent for travel to Qatar during the tournament, compared to bookings in January this year.
FlyDubai and Qatar Airways will operate up to 120 daily shuttle flights in and out of Dubai World Central airport between Sunday and December 19, carrying football fans to Doha for the game and back to Dubai, Dubai Airports said on Tuesday.
The UAE's national airline, Etihad, will also increase its flight capacity from Abu Dhabi to Doha to six a day starting Sunday.
