Tangmo: Wrt "Why not ops out of DWC?"
It's not that the airports are especially distant from one another, but the logistics are immense!
You'd have passengers whom are ticketed for flights out of 'Dubai' (
and when they think 'Dubai', they're thinking 'DXB' and not 'DWC'... in fact bugger-all people are even aware that DWC exists, never mind where it is?!!), and you can be sure that they'd accordingly turn up at DXB and they'd then need transporting down to DWC... and then there are those passengers whom are connecting between FZ & EK (
& other airlines) and vice versa (
how would we deal with them?). And that there are bugger-all connecting flights out of DWC. And that there is still, as yet, a very limited transport infrastructure to / from DWC, and that simply getting to DWC is expensive in itself (
e.g. in terms of a taxi fare from down-town Dubai or from DXB), and that the metro doesn't reach there (
yet).
And if FZ were to start transporting pax to / from DWC, there's increase in road transport, e.g. 1x full B737-800 would probably require 3x coaches just for the passengers and also a good sized delivery van (
and / or lorry) for all their baggage... just do the math on how many vehicles that would require and the direct cost of procuring & running that transport (
and the indirect costs associated with road congestion and / or traffic jams, and all the effects thereof) ?!
And what of managing crews, and / or the engineering support, etc, etc, and / or the inevitable chaos that would occur (
to all of the above) during the transition period between the transferring of flights / ops from DXB to DWC, and then back again some weeks later, and the list goes on and on, and all of that for a supposed period of maybe +11 weeks ?!
That all said, it's just occurred to me (
hence the edit) that, wrt the dates announced for the runway's maintenance (
1st May - 20th July):
- The workers mid-day-break period starts on 15th June (lasting thru until 15th September), and during which employers must not make staff to work outside between 12.30pm and 3pm.
- The last 3 weeks & 2 days of the planned maintenance work will be during Ramadan;
... uhm, wanna take bets when it's actually gonna be finished ?!