Adds CEO comments, details from paragraph 3 onwards

DOHA, May 19 (Reuters) - State-owned Qatar Airways posted an annual net profit of a record 7.8 billion riyals ($2.1 billion) for the 2024 financial year ended March 31, up 28% from a year earlier, the company said on Monday, and expects strong demand ahead.

Demand from the Gulf has defied a global slowdown, with regional airlines reporting steady bookings even as trade tensions, currency swings and recession fears weigh on key Western markets.

CEO Badr Mohammed Al-Meer said the company had established strategic partnerships across the industry to enable it to "remain agile in the face of ever-shifting world events, whether political, economic or environmental."

"Our best year commercially in the airline's history was 2024 and we fully expect demand in 2025 to remain as strong," Al-Meer said in a statement.

Revenue and other operating income rose over 6% to 86 billion riyals for the 12 months ended March 31. The airline carried just over 43 million passengers over the year, up 7.8% year-on-year.

Network capacity grew by 4% compared to the previous financial year.

Over the past year, Qatar Airways has acquired a 25% stake in Virgin Australia and a 25% stake in South Africa-based regional carrier Airlink.

It placed an order last week for 160 Boeing BA.N 777X and 787 planes with GE Aerospace engines worth $96 billion, the largest ever widebody deal for the companies, during U.S. President Donald Trump's high-profile visit to Qatar.

Qatar Airways saw above-market growth in passenger numbers from April 2024 until January this year, a senior executive told Reuters in March, up 9% across its network.

(Reporting by Andrew Mills and Federico Maccioni; Editing by David Holmes and Rachna Uppal)

((Andrew.Mills@thomsonreuters.com;))