Dubai: Qatar Airways is starting flights to Auckland, New Zealand in what will become the world’s longest non-stop service when it launches on December 3 later this year.

Akbar Al Baker, the Qatar Airways chief executive, formally announced the route, along with 18 others, on Wednesday at tourism and travel trade show ITB Berlin in Germany, according to a statement on the airlines website.

The announcement came just seven days after Emirates started direct flights to Auckland on March 2, taking the world’s longest non-stop flight title from Qantas.

The Qatar Airways flight will be slightly longer than Emirates’ recording breaking 14,200 kilometre, 17-hour-and-15-minute journey because of the location of the airline’s Doha hub that is west of Dubai.

Al Baker, who recently described himself as “a very controversial figure in the aviation industry,” revealed in January his intentions to fly direct to Auckland, a market the airline doesn’t currently serve.

Emirates quickly followed up announcing it will start direct flights in just five weeks while maintaining its existing three daily Airbus A380 services via Australia. Emirates also flies daily to Christchurch in New Zealand.

Two days after the Emirates launch, Al Baker said on March 4 he would hold off until the end of the year to start Auckland services “out of respect to Emirates,” News Corp’s The Australian reported.

Like Emirates, Qatar Airways will fly a Boeing 777-200LR (long range) on the route, according to previous comments by Al Baker, who has also said he intends to fly direct to Santiago, Chile in South America.

Emirates also planned to launch new direct flights to South America. It said it would launch non-stop services to Panama City, Panama it what would have been an even longer flight than Auckland. But after delaying the launch once, Emirates said on March 3 it had postponed flights to Panama until “the end of 2016 or early 2017.” A day after Auckland services started.

Once Qatar Airways start flights to Auckland later this year it will leave Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways as the only major Gulf carrier not flying to New Zealand. It is understood Etihad has an agreement to not fly to the country with Air New Zealand carrying Etihad passengers from Australia under a codeshare deal.