Mephistopheles, I am voicing my opinion, I am not brown nosing for a job. Secondly, yes you are right my years of experience in the aviation do not compare to most people on this forum, but thats why I am here, partly to voice my opinion and also to learn. If GF didn't do a thorough study on the Embraer then you are right about that mess up. But my point about bitching about routes still stands.
I still think that it is a better strategy for GF to have their foot firmly placed in the Gulf first, and to then use that position to start international routes, not the other way around. GF was in damage control mode when Majali got in, he had to shut down what wasn't working, and immediately (mostly long haul international routes).
Look GF still has a head start on all the regions big players when it comes to its Middle East network. GF has to build on this and use it to their advantage, and I think that is what the CEO is trying to do. That was the point of my post, I'm not disagreeing with you on the mismanagement of funds by some folk and all the other problems, I'm not even going to touch on that, I'll leave it to you. But, and I'll say it again more plainly, my argument is that GF has to first have a great local (and I use the term local to mean GCC, Iraq, Iran etc.) route structure to funnel passengers to Bahrain before taking them abroad, they should not be focusing on flying Brits to Thailand or Indians to North America, that is what all the big players have been doing and they have only just realized that they need to start collecting passengers from their local areas hence the sudden rush for smaller planes, the creation of FlyDubai etc. Relying on far away markets for the majority of your revenue is a little risky. Especially since a few changes with regard to price, route structure and product from some airlines in Europe, Asia and Africa could lead to big changes in passenger numbers for the 3 ME carriers. Relying on your local passengers to make up your business is, in my opinion, and I'm sure of some others is a sound business policy.
Now over to mismanagement, corruption and the rest of that, like I said I'll leave that to someone else to discuss.