Dubai: Flydubai chief executive officer Gaith Al Gaith is confident the airline will make a profit this year despite reporting an earlier loss.
“We’re very bullish,” he told Gulf News in an interview at the Dubai Airshow on Sunday, when asked whether the airline would make money this year.
Flydubai lost Dh147.4 million in the first half of 2015. The airline cited weak demand on Russian routes and the suspension of services to Ukraine, Iraq and Yemen.
But the airline has already made back the losses in third quarter and Al Gaith said it was performing well so far into the fourth quarter. The second half of the year is traditionally flydubai’s best, he said.
But he also warned that the way traffic rights are set up in the region, which allow an airline to fly from one country to another, saying they are too restrictive.
He picked out India, Pakistan and the Middle East as the toughest markets to gain access to.
“India does not represent 2 per cent of our business and, sorry, but that is not acceptable because India should be at least 20 per cent,” he said.
“There [are] still plenty of opportunities for us,” Al Gaith said, adding that the airline would be “far, far bigger” if the UAE had a similar traffic rights agreements on the Indian subcontintent and the Middle East as it does in Europe and the United States.
But the airline, which carried over 7 million passengers in 2014, has no immediate plans to fly any further into western Europe to countries such as Germany and Italy. It does fly to Prague in the Czech Republic.
“It’s not about going where we can go... If you don’t have the right network to support it, you’ll just be a small fish,” Al Gaith said.
On India, he is hopeful Prime Minister Narendra Modi will push through the changes needed so that airlines like flydubai can increase services to the world’s second-largest populated country.
“There is one person who can open the skies in India [and] that is the current prime minister. If it cannot be done during this time, you will have to wait a long time,” Al Gaith said.
Al Gaith also said the airline was working on introducing internet connectivity and live television streaming on board its aircraft, but added that no decision has been made on when such services would be rolled out.
