Flydubai will start operations in Jebel Ali within the next few years

  • 9 months ago
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Flydubai’s CEO, Ghaith Al Ghaith, stated that the company will have more room to expand with the construction of the Al Maktoum International Airport.

“We will start operations in Jebel Ali in the next couple of years. We need to grow in Dubai World Central. We will have two operations — in Jebel Ali and Dubai International Airport. We will eventually move to Al Maktoum International Airport because they will be closing down the Dubai airport. In this relocation, there will be plans for handover and we will be part of that plan,” he said.

In ten years, Al Maktoum Airport will replace Dubai International Airport, according to a plan announced by Dubai.

In response to a question concerning the effects of the historic rains that fell on the previous month, he gave his word that the plane was not harmed by the rain.

Mid-April saw record rains in the United Arab Emirates, which caused runway flooding and forced flight cancellations.

“We maintained safe operations. We managed the crisis by using our capacity as 24-hour operations cancellations allowed us to reach out to our customers and we offered one-third of people refunds and the rest two-third re-booked and travelled with us. From that point of view, it was not a big problem because people eventually travelled. So there was no impact on business flow. On the aircraft side, there was no damage,” the flydubai chief said during a media roundtable.

He ruled out that the rains would have any effect on the company’s finances.

Flydubai had earlier announced the start of a retrofit project that will see the interiors of most of its next-generation Boeing fleet completely upgraded. Before the year ends, the goal is to finish the retrofit program.

He continued by saying that the airline overcame difficulties as a result of the day-long operations halt.

He said there was nothing to be concerned about because Dubai Airport has the best infrastructure in its class.

The airline reached 5 million passengers in the first four months of this year and the flydubai chief expects full-year numbers to surpass 15 million, beating last year’s 13.8 million passenger numbers.

He also said that the airline intends to relaunch ten destinations in the summer and that reservations for the summer are looking extremely strong.

He also ruled out establishing another base outside Dubai. “(We are) Dubai-centric and there is more potential to grow from Dubai. I don’t see us moving to another hub because we can grow to 200 aircraft easily… India represents 1.5 per cent of our capacity and 20 per cent of our staff is from India. If we have 20 per cent more India capacity, you can imagine how big we are going to grow.”

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