Gulf Air offers biggest Middle East network

Samer Majali has implemented some major changes to Gulf Air's new winter schedule

Under its new winter schedule, Gulf Air will operate 528 flights a week across the GCC and the surrounding region – the biggest network offered by an airline in the Middle East.

The carrier will connect to 43 destinations in 28 countries and increase connectivity on two in three of its flights starting from October – an increase of 22%, compared to last year.

Connectivity within two hours will be offered on 61% of the Bahrain carrier’s services, with a fifth of all flights connecting within one hour, an increase of 25% on the previous timetable.

The introduction of early morning departures from GCC destinations, including Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Muscat, in addition to revised departure times on key destinations in the Levant region is proving popular with business travellers, said Gulf Air CEO Samer Majali.

“Our new winter schedule confirms our strong position in the region. Not only do we have the biggest regional network but we have also greatly enhanced our schedule making it even more efficient and convenient for our customers, particularly those travelling on business. Our commitment to the business traveller is, ‘less travel time, more business time.’”

Erbil, in Northern Iraq is the newest destination to be added to Gulf Air’s network with a three times weekly service introduced as part of the airline’s new schedule. This follows the launch of Baghdad and Najaf in September.

“The start of our third service to Iraq and increase to a daily service to Najaf is yet another objective successfully achieved as we continue to strive to be the market leader operating into Iraq,” Majali said.

Gulf Air plans to introduce further Iraq services to Basra and Suleimaniah in the near future.

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Gulf Air’s new winter schedule also sees the resumption of a daily service to Bangalore in India following its temporary suspension earlier this year as a result of the downturn in the Indian economy.

“I am delighted that we have resumed our services to Bangalore. It is one of the most vibrant cities in India and a major economic centre supporting a growing information technology industry, dubbing it the ‘Silicon Valley of India’. Despite it being hit hard by the economic crash, there are strong indications that India is returning to historic levels of growth which helped us make the decision to resume services to this important hub.”

The airline has also improved its connectivity to the Far East.

“We have worked hard to secure improved timings to and from Shanghai,” Majali explained. “Under the new schedule Shanghai is now part of our afternoon wave of departures from Bahrain with passengers arriving in Shanghai at 0600hrs ready to do business. Our new Shanghai schedule will not only please our existing customers but encourage more travellers to choose Gulf Air when going to doing business in this important financial hub.”

A new morning departure time has also been added to the airline’s double daily service to Manila.