From Gulf News today !
Gulf Air to reduce fleet and drop six destinations
By Habib Toumi, Bureau chief
Manama: Gulf Air, the national carrier of Bahrain and Oman, is dropping six destinations and opting for an all Airbus fleet as the ailing company launches an aggressive programme to reverse daily losses of $1 million.
"The network will be fundamentally restructured," president and chief executive Andre Dosİ said.
"We will stop operating our heavily loss-making long-haul services to Dublin, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Sydney and Singapore. Instead, we will allocate more assets to better serve all important centres in the Gulf and the Middle Eastern region," he added.
The company will also reduce its fleet from 34 to 28 aircraft, taking out in the process the entire Boeing B-767 fleet (nine aircraft) and phasing out the Gulf Traveller brand, and replacing their nine A340s with four A321s, two 215-seat A330s and six 293-seat A330s.
But Dosİ, a Swiss citizen who took over this month, told Gulf News that the decision to have an all-Airbus fleet was purely technical and practical as the company's fleet before the structure plan consisted of 25 Airbus and nine Boeing aircraft. "This decision is also in line with our goal to radically simplify the business," he said.
Mahmood Al Kooheji, Gulf Air board of directors deputy chairman, said the overall restructuring, at a cost of 310 million Bahraini dinars ($825 million), consisted of a complete reshape of the network and improvement of customer service through higher punctuality, better reliability and lower connection times, and of investments of 190 million dinars ($505 million) from shareholders and financial institutions to improve quality.
Massive losses
"The airline's operation is currently losing more than $1 million a day and the figure would even be substantially higher if we include other costs such as financing.
Accumulated losses and costs, including 2007, would amount to 254 million dinars ($675 million)," he said.
Under the first part of the programme, at a cost of 120 million dinars ($319 million), Gulf Air will seek to close its current profitability gap of 156 million dinars ($414 million).
The fleet replacement and restructuring programme is expected to be completed in the beginning of 2009.