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Doha， QATAR -- Qatar Airways hascontinued its award-winning streak bysecuring a string of accolades in the an-nual World Airline Awards 2005 carriedout by Skytrax， the independent aviationindustry monitoring agency.

Qatar Airways has held onto the cov-eted Five Star award for excellence， ser-vice and high standards， being one ofonly four airlines in the world -- and theonly Middle East carrier -- to earn suchan illustrious accolade.

Qatar Airways' First Class lounge inDoha， the airline's operational hub， hasbeen named among the top 10 in theworld -- and best in the Middle East --for its facilities and high service levels.

And Qatar Airways' inflight cuisineacross all three cabins -- First， Businessand Economy -- has been widelyrecognised as being among the best inthe world， achieving top 10 status onceagain.

With over 375 airlines featuring inthe awards and voting by more than 12million passengers worldwide， the sur-vey is regarded as totally independent-free of outside or financial influences. Itis the only airline survey that achieves atruely global audience comprising morethan 94 different respondent nationalitiesin 2005.

The best cabin crew award was basedon a number of quality attributes cover-ing a variety of areas that included; as-sistance during boarding， welcomingpassengers， service efficiency， applyingsafety procedures， language skills， prob-lem solving ability， enthusiasm， sincer-ity of staff， friendliness and staff presen-tation and grooming.

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Of-ricer Akbar A1 Baker expressed delightat the achievements which he saidrecognised the sheer hard work and de-termination of staff who have made theairline a success it is today.

\"Qatar Airways was just a small air-line with only a handful of routes anddestinations at the time of its relaunch in1997. Today we operate to 63 destina-tions around the world with a young andmodem fleet which is growing at a phe-nomenal rate，\" he said. By the end of2005， the airline plans to serve at least70 destinations， including Alexandriafrom June 9 and the Greek capital Ath-ens， starting on June 15

\"The pressures of growth have beenenormous， but our employees on theground and in the air have risen to thechallenge. As an airline we have maturedvery quickly and being recognisedamong a highly competitive list of estab-lished and well-respected airlines is ahuge honour.

\"Qatar Airways is no longer a smallplayer in a big market. We can competewith the bigger players who have beenaround a lot longer than us and recogni-tion demonstrates our ability to prove tothe global marketplace that we can suc-cessfully compete and prove our standardsare among the best in the world.\" 13

About Skytrax

The Skytrax survey is a globbarometer of passenger opinions aboutairlines around the world. Conductedover an 11-month period between June2004 -- May 2005， more than 12 millionpassengers took part in the annualairline survey. Respondents completedtheir answers through a number ofmethods， including an online customersurvey and telephone interviews.