KAC
Kuwait Airways was founded in 1954, so it's hitting 54 next year. to date, we have 17 aircrafts and a pathetic 37 destinations. in the entirety of Europe, the airline flies to FIVE destinations: Geneva, Rome, Paris, London and Frankfurt. for comparison, Emirates flies to six destination in the UNITED KINGDOM alone, more than Kuwait Airways on an entire continent.
our fleet is, simply, miserable. seventeen aircrafts that have been through Hell and high water, and yet, nobody seems to refurbish them or give them an urgently-needed revamp/upgrade. Emirates currently has 93 aircrafts in their fleet, with another 96 on order, the first of which enter their system in October this year. by 2015, if this make-believe deal even goes through, we'll have 55. by 2015, Emirates should have well over 130 aircrafts. problems on our fleet include: seats that don't recline, faulty televisions (oh god... all the damn time), old toilets, stained seating and carpeting, dirty pillowcases... it goes on. i'm personally getting VERY sick of the blue-and-green color scheme, the dark blue carpet, the sickening blue in the toilets, the mind-warping wallpaper on the barriers, and everything that goes along with each aircraft. for a rich country with sky-high assets like Kuwait, one can assume that we can invest in having a kickass airline.
and then there's the problem of SERVICE, the little things that set an airline apart. Kuwait Airways' service is, without hyperbole, the WORST i have encountered anywhere. Qatar Airways' is a legend, Emirates isn't all that great but passable, Etihad Airways was fantastic, Gulf Air was great, Saudi Arabian was decent, and i haven't flown Oman Air yet. how can an entire staff body be so negative? condescending, obnoxious, not-in-the-mood, and overall horrible. when i was flying from Kuwait to New York City in first class (where service is supposed to be good), my seat didn't recline. a thirteen-and-a-half hour flight with an unreclining seat = utter nightmare. i asked a staff member to look at it, he asked me (get this) if i wanted to be moved to an empty seat in the last row in Economy (jerk.). whatever, flight passed, it sucked. from Kuwait to Cairo, the female staff members were too busy flirting with the male passenger in front of me, blocking the aisle and ignoring all other passenger requests. true, there are some good ones, but in a sea of people not in the mood to do their jobs properly, it's not a great reflection.
other airlines expand into new markets, while we SHUT DOWN. 37 destinations in 53 years. Etihad Airways launched in November 2003, and they have a fleet of 20 and 35 destinations. by 2010, they'll have 70. that's almost ten new destinations A YEAR. since 2000, Kuwait Airways stopped flights to Malaga, Casablanca, Prague, Karachi, Amsterdam, and Athens. the Chairman's constant blather of expansion, i feel, is nothing but a pile of inflated crap. Australia, a lot of Asia, and North America? pipe dream. they're reinstating flights to Kuala Lumpur after what, two failed attempts? and now they want to head to China. good god.
how the HELL does Kuwait Airways win all those airline awards, anyway? bribery?
in the booming Middle Eastern market, Kuwait's falling behind in everything. i'm not gonna go into the logistics and details of it all, but it's evident in everything we do. throwing a few new hotels here and there won't attract tourists, no matter how much we want to believe that.
(The above was written by kuwaiti_patriot on April 15th, 2007)