Qatar Airways, the national carrier of the State of Qatar, is celebrating five years of flying to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), which it started doing on July 19, 2007. The fifth anniversary comes a week after Qatar Airways was named World's Best Airline at the prestigious annual Skytrax awards and just a month after the carrier celebrated five years of service to New York -- its first U.S. gateway. The airline offers daily nonstops to Washington, D.C. from Qatar Airways' hub in Doha.

The Washington-Doha nonstop service is approximately 12 hours flying time and is operated with the airline's flagship Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, in a 2-2-2 cabin configuration offering 42 seats in Business Class and 293 seats in Economy. Qatar Airways currently flies from six gateways in the Americas, including Washington, D.C., Houston, New York, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo (all daily) and Montreal (three times a week).

Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth in just 15 years of operations, currently operating a modern fleet of 110 aircraft to 117 destinations across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America. Since the beginning of the year, Qatar Airways has launched flights to Baku (Azerbaijan); Tbilisi (Georgia); Kigali (Rwanda); Zagreb (Croatia); Erbil (Iraq); Baghdad (Iraq); and most recently, Perth (Australia), with many more destinations planned during 2012.

Over the next few months, Qatar Airways will launch services to a diverse portfolio of new routes, including Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (July 25); Yangon, Myanmar (Oct. 3); Maputo, Mozambique (Oct. 31); and a date yet to be announced to the Serbian capital of Belgrade.