Qatar Airways looks set to continue its cracking rate of expansion with new routes to Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Greece and the UK scheduled to start in the first few months of 2018. New destinations announced so far by the Gulf carrier will see it fly to Pattaya, Thailand, from January 28; Penang, Malaysia from Feburary 6: Canberra, Australia, from February 12; Thessalonki, Greece from March 28; and Cardiff, Wales from May 1. It kicks off the New year with a new service to Vietnam’s Hanoi on January 1. The service is being introduced in conjunction with increased frequencies to Chi Minh City and comes after Qatar in October  inked an interline agreement with local budget operator VietJet. Also on the cards: increased capacity to Perth, Australia, from May 1 with the introduction to the West Australian capital of its flagship QA380. The new destinations and frequencies are in keeping with chief executive Akbar Al Baker’s vow in June not to let a blockade by the Gulf State’s neighbors affect his airline’s expansion. “We remain committed to expanding our global network, and to taking our passengers anywhere in the world they wish to go,” Al Baker said this week. “After twenty years of service, we vow to never rest on our achievements, but rather to focus on how we can continue to innovate, and to deliver an exceptional five-star experience to every one of our passengers, no matter what class they travel. “Against the backdrop of the illegal blockade against the State of Qatar, we are more committed than ever to welcoming everyone onboard and taking them wherever they need to go.” The move to close air and sea borders to Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt over a political dispute saw the carrier suspend flights to the four countries. It was forced to use a narrow corridor of airspace to get its other international flights in and out of its hub in Qatar’s capital, Doha. Nonetheless, it ended 2017 with 11 new destinations added to its network and more to come. The new routes included the start in February of this year of what is currently the world’s longest flight, Doha-Auckland. Others were Nice, France; Dublin, Ireland; Skopje; Sohar, Oman; Kyiv, Ukraine; Prague, Czech Republic, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Adana, Turkey; Chiang Mai, Thailand and St. Petersburg, Russia. Most were added after the blockade was announced. The same was also true for many of the routes on which Qatar added frequency, in some cases doubling flights. These included new routes such as Prague and Kyiv as well as destinations such as Colombia, Sri Lanka; Moscow, Russia; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Warsaw; Poland and Helsinki, Finland. Qatar also launched an impressive new business class suite, dubbed QSuite, in March and is now flying the product to London, Paris and New York with Washington to follow soon. The patented design offers a double bed in business class and allows some seats to be transformed into a bigger private suite that allows families or friends to travel together. Qatar collected a slew of awards during the year but not everything went its way. It was a target of the US ban on lap-tops and other large electronic devices in cabins and failed in a bid to buy into American Airlines after a hostile reception the US carrier’s management. Instead, it announced in November it was moving to buy a stake of almost 10 per cent in Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific. More recently, it announced it had supersized an order for 50 Airbus A320neos to bigger, long-range A321neos to  support continuing network development.