Marwan Boodai, CEO and founder of Kuwait-based Jazeera Airways, told Arabian Business that he was “worried” that Airbus’ management focus would be “driven towards firefighting and resolving problems with other production lines”, leaving the production of Jazeera’s narrow-bodied planes “at the back of their minds”.
Jazeera currently operates a fleet of five Airbus A320 aircraft from hubs in Kuwait and Dubai however, the European manufacturer has been hit by a series of costly, high-profile delays to its new A380 ‘superjumbo’ project.
“The main problems that Airbus is having do not affect the narrow-body production. They are problems with the long-haul aircraft, so for us as low-cost operators we’re not affected,” added Boodai. “We just hope that Airbus will continue to focus on the narrow-body aircraft, which is a very mature market, making a lot of money, and financing the rest of the operation for Airbus.
“Our policy as a company is to only operate new aircraft, and the difficulty we’re facing today is getting the aircraft quickly enough,” he said. “We hope that they will have more production lines for the A320s, rather than spending all their time trying to work out the problems with the A380s.”
Boodai stressed that, so far, Airbus had “met all delivery promises” made to the budget airline, however, he refused to rule out the purchase of Boeing aircraft in the future. “We base our business model on a single fleet, as until you reach a certain number of aircraft the economies of scale do not justify having two fleets within the airline,” he said. “We’re open when it comes to our expansion in the future. It depends on where we’re flying, and whether those new destinations justify having a different fleet.” The airline serves some of the most popular destinations for both business and leisure in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent, including Beirut, Bahrain, Damascus, Aleppo, Amman, Alexandria, Luxor, Mumbai, New Delhi, Mashhad, Assiut, Cochin, and Sharm El Sheikh.
Today, the airline remains as the only operating Middle Eastern carrier that is neither owned nor subsidised by any government. Its capital – raised through an up-front IPO in 2004 – stood at US$34m until last year, when the board of directors approved an injection of a further US$34m to be raised through its existing 36,500 shareholders. The airline has also announced its plans to list on the Kuwait stock exchange in Q1 of 2007.
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