flydubai still committed to India flights plan

GROWTH PREDICTION: The CEO of flydubai says the budget airline market in the Middle East is set to grow by 10 percent in two years. (Getty Images)

Low cost airline flydubai remains committed to its Indian hubs, despite postponing three of its routes this month, its CEO said on Tuesday.

"India will be operational. We are committed to operating [routes] to India," Ghaith Al Ghaith said without elaborating.

Last month the Dubai-based carrier was forced to postpone all three of its routes to Lucknow, Coimbatore and Chandigarh due to operational issues.

Passengers affected by the cancellation were given a full refund and a free voucher for travel on any of the airline’s routes until the end of November.

With more than one million India’s residing in the UAE, India is an important route for the budget carrier.

Regional budget airlines could grow by up to 10 percent in the next two years, Al Ghaith added.

He told Arabian Business that he expects the low cost model, which already represents around 20 percent of traffic in Europe, to grow from five percent to 15 percent in the next couple of years.

“Low cost in our region represents about five percent. In Europe this is 20 percent. I think in the next couple of years it will definitely grow ten percent; it’s a growing sector,” he said.

flydubai launched in June amid the global economic downturn, which has seen a slump in passenger traffic.

The no frills airline, which is wholly owned by the government of Dubai, has already launched five routes to Beirut, Amman, Damascus, Aleppo and Alexandria, and is due to launch its sixth route to Djibouti in September.

flydubai is competing with other low cost airlines including Kuwait’s Jazeera Airways and Sharjah-based Air Arabia.

In July, the airline announced a nine-day sale on its tickets due to better than expected passenger figures. Routes on its first three routes to Beirut, Amman and Damascus were all slashed in half.

Al Ghaith said he was “pleasantly surprised” at the high passenger numbers during the summer and said he expected the carrier to continue with similar sales on tickets.

“It’s the summer so it’s definitely a good surprise [to see passenger traffic so high],” he said.

“The sale campaign is part of what we are about. We are a low cost airline and we encourage people to travel more so whenever there is an opportunity for us to see the trends, we [will] offer people the chance to travel more often. Our drive is to drive efficiency so we can translate that to cheaper prices.”

The airline expects to operate between 14-16 destinations by the end of the year in the Middle East and Sub Continent.

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READERS' COMMENTS

why always complaining? low price for low expectations, I m loving it
Posted by Nick, Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Wednesday 19 August 2009 at 15:51 UAE time


you get what you paid for...budget means trade off, and one of these trade off, is flexibility, so if you think operating an aircraft is like driving a car, stick to your car, or boat to go where the airline is flying or stop complaining about everything. Low cost model allows people to travel to places where they could potentially never go, likewise, saving those who can organise themselve early lots of money! so yea routes are not released and so what, I went to damascus with FlyDubai and their service was much better then AirAsia, Ryanair, or AirBerlin,...so good job, and keep opening more routes! btw EK is not flying to Djibouti and some competition on direct routes will do us all good for a) service b) schedule and c) prices.

fly dubai to where exactly?
Posted by sandi, dubai, UAE on Wednesday 19 August 2009 at 09:29 UAE time


Budget, low cost that is a load of fairy dust! Cancelled flights, operational problems tickets to nowhere, travel plans is disarray that is the reality. So I got a ticket to anywhere till November but I want to go now and to my destination that you said you would fly me to. I came to you because I wanted to save money. But now I have a ticket that I can’t really use and will end up spending more money (that I don’t really have) if I want to stick to my well planned and within budget vacation.

All this PR exercise of announcing new routes, making sweeping statements to the press, the public is not impressed. Get your act in order before you shoot out these statements or else it will be more like shooting yourself in the foot!

Emirates and FLydubai
Posted by Maninder Pal Singh, Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Tuesday 18 August 2009 at 13:23 UAE time

I think FlyDubai will eat the profit share of Emirates airlines.

I donot understand how it benefits the Emirates Airlines with Flydubai which are travelling to same routes in India and other routes(in Future).

What about GCC flights?
Posted by Sweetpea on Tuesday 18 August 2009 at 13:12 UAE time


I want to know when flights will be introduced to Doha and other destinations in the GCC. At the moment the 40 minute flight costs more than AED2,000 on Qatar Airways or Emirates - extortionate!

Before launch, flydubai announced an agreement to fly to Qatar.... but then silence! What is going on?

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