Is Fujairah sustainable?

[newswatcher]

Fujairah boasts of a growth in passenger traffic of 94% for the first half of the year. However, the figures given look rather strange! Passenger figures given as 50,183 and aircraft handled at 8,487.

A simple division results in a figure of 6 pax/aircraft handled!

Does this mean that they include all aircraft movements in these figures?

Have never managed to find out how I can get there from the UK, Travelocity does not want to know! Now they have opened the Al Aqah Beach hotel, it would cut out that cross-UAE drive!

[rsoman]

As far as I know only one airline fly there on a scheduled service. Indian Airlines has a weekly A320 from Madras in the south of India via a couple of other Indian cities (Trichy,Calicut) to Fujairah which continues on to Kuwait. Departs Tuesdays at 1300 from MAA and arrives 1800 at FJR. On the way back leaves FJR on Wednesdays at 0410 and reaches Madras at 1230.
Lovely flight to take if you love crappy airline food as from what Iheard they serve it on some form or the other on every leg, which in this case makes 3 shots! And Indian Airlines does serve drinks of the alcoholic variety on their international flights, so your throat will not go too dry!

Indian Airlines does not have traffic rights on FJR Kuwait and back, that is I guess the reason why travelocity doesnot show up the connection as if you are flying in form Europe/US east coast the connection via MAA is too roundabout to show up in any display. On the other hand , if you are flying in from South East Asia, US West coast, no reason why travelocity shouldnt show this. But the layover in MAA which is gnerally around 15 hrs or so can be a factor.

So on the whole not worth the touble, fly to AUH or DXB or any other convenient point and go by road!

Now coming to your figures, I do not know your source. But a few figures I have with me does indicate the airport is a leading contender for occuplying hte last few slots in terms of passengers handled in ay chart!

As far as the Indian Airlines flight is concerned, this flight is primarily to serve passengers to Kuwait. However they have been operating this one for quite a few years and the statistics I have with me tie in with what I was saying.

For 2000-01 (this is India we are talking about - upto date statistics is still something I dream about), the last year I have , the 52 flights ICoperated in the year on the India to FJR route had the following breakdown in TOTAL for the year.

MAA FJR 8
TRZ FJR 79
CCJ FJR 1541

TOTAL 1628

which gives something like 32 passengers a flight! Naturally most of the traffic in this flight is for KWI the last destination.

Hope this is of some use.

Cheers

[newswatcher]

Thanks rsoman, the figures came from the UAE "Gulf News".