Gulf Air In The Midst Of Change
Abi BrayAirline drops Hyderabad, Bangalore and Shanghai.
The currently struggling Middle Eastern airline Gulf Air has revealed a new strategy which it hopes will help the company ride the current economic storm.
Gulf Air plans to reorganise its routing offer, adding 20 more lucrative, new destinations in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe, while abandoning 15 other underperforming connections.
Gulf Air CEO Samer Majali said the commercial passenger carrier is currently dealing with huge losses and wouldn’t be able to survive unless it modified some key elements. He said Gulf Air is likely to post a loss of £308m for 2009.
The airline has recently announced that Hyderabad, Bangalore and Shanghai won’t be part of their network of destinations in the not so distant future although a timelines for these route cancellations still needs to be evaluated.
Other adjustments included redundancies, which Mr Majali branded as “inevitable”.
He added that the demand for travel has experienced a slump and the carrier is facing fierce competition from relatively new regional companies, resulting in massive losses for the airline which includ public funds.
At the moment, explained Mr Majali, Gulf Air benefits from important government financial backing, and its expenditures greatly surpass its earnings, adding that the current situation is undoubtedly non-sustainable and that other parts of the national economy of the Kingdom of Bahrain are also deserving of this assistance.
According to Mr Majali, once the new strategy will be in place, the carrier will be able to expect positive results and a dept free position by 2012.
Gulf Air offers a host of destinations around the world but clearly focuses on the Middle East and other parts of Asia, such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Katmandu, Mumbai, Delhi, Manila and Dhaka.
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Filed under Business & Finance, Travel News, World News