Sadly if you look at our passengers, we deal a lot with low income people (paying very low fare) coming from europe (flying for cheap vacation in Thai / Nepal etc.) or asia (workers coming or going to the gulf), we lost the battle for the premium passengers a long time ago due to our aging fleet, old cabin (how is it still possible that our GF A340 have the old ugly first class seats when we have our Singaporian's A340 with skybed: how many times did I hear premium passengers complaining about being sold a skybed and getting a very old seat? hundreds of times...), poor on time performance etc.
And this business being a low margin business, it is really with this premium passengers that airlines make money... Look at our competitors : Qatar has an amazing cabin, Emirates is a real global airlines with a great service.
I think we also have a strategic problem, remember : 'Gulf Air : the biggest network in the middle east' , yeah sure so it means our main market is intra gulf and flying to the neighbouring countries, but the problem is now we are facing a fierce competition on this segment because of all these new low costs : Air Arabia, soon Bahrain Air , Jazeera Airways... Look what's happenning in Europe: if you look at all the major carrier BA, AF, LH, they all loose (or barely breakeven) on their short-medium haul network and they really make their money on the long haul... GF and the Middle East situation is not different. And if GF don't plan soon to refocus on the long haul market they will loose.... Because GF structures are nothing but light, we have way too many employees for the size of our airline... And as a consequence our cost structure is everything but LOW !
I don't know where is Bahrain Air heading? I didn't see any airplanes but they are already selling ticket at the seef mall, but imagine one second that Bahrain Air get 10 A320s over the next 3-4 years : guess what GF will bleed money, I am telling you it is very sad. According to IATA the middle east has seen the biggest increase in passenger numbers worldwide this year and guess what GF is still bleeding money... it tells you one thing : when the time become more difficult GF will die or only survive with massive cash injection...
How can they dream to privatize such a big liability ?
BD
Last edited by boeingdriverx; 22nd Dec 2007 at 07:18.