DOHA, Qatar – Qatar Airways has exceeded the four million Facebook fan milestone, and by doing so the airline maintains its fourth position for most “Liked” airline across the industry, according to analytics firm Socialbakers.

Launched on Facebook in April 2011, Qatar Airways has achieved remarkable fan growth, especially in the past year, due to a wide variety of promotions including fan engagement, exclusive airfares, the airline’s sponsorship of the world’s most popular football club, FC Barcelona, and its recent move to the new state-of-the-art Hamad International Airport.

Qatar Airways’ growth on Facebook has been a result of its broad content initiatives, where its aim has been to offer unique glimpses into the airline’s expansion, operations, sponsorships, employees and culture.

“Qatar Airways has developed a strong social media presence across 14 platforms as a means of building relationships with our expanding customer base,” said Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer, His Excellency Mr. Akbar Al Baker.

“As a result, we have gained tremendous insight into the attitudes and opinions of our passengers toward the Qatar Airways brand and discovered many great stories and product suggestions from our large fan base.”

Contests have also played a significant role in building the airline’s popularity on the social web. During the past year, the airline has launched popular promotions such as: “Be a VIP at the FC Barcelona Asia Tour,” “Where’s the Panda?,” and its first ever Instagram contest “Destigram” with a focus on Qatar Airways’ new routes.

Building on this momentum, Qatar Airways recently launched the well-received FanbooQ where passengers have been asked to submit their best photos of Qatar Airways for posting on its new FanbooQ album.

Qatar Airways has a social media presence on the following sites:

http://twitter.com/qatarairways
http://instagram.com/qatarairways
http://plus.google.com/+qatarairways
http://qatarairways.tumblr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/company/qatar-airways
http://www.pinterest.com/qatarairways
http://www.youtube.com/user/qatarairways
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qatarairways
http://vk.com/qatarairways (Russia)
http://www.weibo.com/qatarairways (China)
http://t.qq.com/qatarairways (China)
http://www.wechat.com (China)

Qatar Airways, the national carrier for the State of Qatar, has seen rapid growth in just 17 years of operation, to the point where today it is flying a modern fleet of 134 aircraft to 141 key business and leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.

Over the next few months, the network will grow further with new routes to Miami, USA (June 10, 2014), Tokyo Haneda, Japan (June 18, 2014), Dallas/Fort Worth, USA (July 1, 2014) and Djibouti (July 27, 2014).