Qatar Airways is poised to become the first airline to fly the Airbus A350 into Australia as part of a rapid expansion in the local market, where it is looking to make inroads against more-established Middle Eastern rivals Emirates and Etihad Airways. 
Qatar on Wednesday said it would begin daily A350 flights from Adelaide to its Doha hub from   May, just weeks after announcing plans for its first flights between Sydney and Doha from   March. Until now, it had only been flying to Doha from Melbourne and Perth.
The Sydney flights were not possible until a bilateral agreement between Australia and Qatar reached last month raised the Middle Eastern carrier's capacity to Australia's four largest airports to 21 flights each way per week. Qatar is allowed unlimited capacity to smaller international ports such as Adelaide, the Gold Coast, Cairns and Darwin. Emirates is the only other Middle Eastern carrier flying to Adelaide, an airport that has recently lost flights from AirAsia X and Malaysia Airlines.
Adelaide Airport managing director Mark Young said new flights from Qatar were excellent news for the state's tourism industry and South Australians travelling abroad.
"The Qatar Airways Doha-Adelaide service opens up a brand new link with the Middle East, and provides excellent connections further afield such as with Europe and the UK," he said, estimating the flights would inject $41 million into the visitor economy and create 228 jobs.
Qatar, which began its first flights to Australia in 2009, has lagged rivals Emirates and Etihad in terms of its capacity into this market. That might be due in part to its lack of alliances with local carriers.
Qantas has a partnership with Emirates and Virgin Australia has one with Etihad. In both cases, competition regulators allow the partners to co-ordinate prices and schedules. Qatar is a member of the oneworld alliance alongside Qantas but the pair do not offer codeshares, and Qantas' preference is to place traffic to or transiting the Middle East on its own aircraft or those of Emirates.
Qatar has won industry accolades for the quality of its in-flight product, but it has also drawn the ire of unions around the globe for its workplace policies. Until this year that included firing female employees who got married or became pregnant within the first five years of their employment. Another concern for staff is a mandatory 12-hour rest rule before shifts, which the company enforces by monitoring employees in company housing, according to Bloomberg.
The airline's safety practices have also come under scrutiny after one of its Boeing 777s took off from Miami Airport from an intersection rather than using the full runway and sliced through light structures at the end of the runway. The aircraft then flew onto Doha where it landed safely, but a preliminary report from the US Federal Aviation Administration said the damage to the airframe was "substantial".
Qatar's chief executive Akbar Al Baker once promised his airline would fly an A350 to Perth in early 2015.
The carrier was the world's first A350 operator.