Business | Tourism
Summer to see growth in air travel
Tickets to home towns of UAE expats are going quickly as residents rush to escape heat
- By Nadia Saleem, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:21 June 7, 2009
Dubai: The beginning of summer is already seeing signs of a pick-up in air travel.
Airlines are gearing up for the busy season and the region is seeing more flying options.
New routes and even new airlines are cropping up.
Etihad Airways is expanding its network to include cities such as Istanbul and Athens. Flights to Larnaca will begin on June 14.
Emirates airline is launching its new route to Luanda next week. Dubai's carrier is also starting the Durban route from October, while its recent additions comprise Milan, Nice, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Kozhikode, Guangzhou, Cape Town and Sao Paulo. Air Arabia, launching its Casablanca hub in July, will see new routes to Brussels, London, Marseille, Milan, Lyon and Paris.
flydubai, UAE's fourth airline and a recent entry into the market, has started routes to Beirut, Amman and Damascus.
The Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad has seen flights to several of its key destinations fill up quickly and is advising early bookings.
Flights to its key cities, which are selling fast include Cairo, Beirut, Amman, New York, Toronto, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Geneva, London and Munich.
Many of these destinations are the home towns of UAE expatriates and tickets to them are in high demand in the summer months, the company said. A total of 900 weekly flights will operate this summer, a 20 per cent rise on the 750 weekly flights, which operated during the same season in 2008.
Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways chief commercial officer, said, "Although the start of 2009 has proved challenging for everyone in the airline industry, Etihad will be very busy during the summer months.
"We are starting to see a flurry of bookings being made for key destinations during June, July and Aug-ust as many residents, both expatriate and Emirati, look to take a break from the heat whether it's to Europe, the Far East, North America or Australia."
While traffic is picking up within the region, Giovanni Bisignani, director-general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) predicted that Middle East carriers' losses would double to $200 million (Dh734 million) this year.
"Their challenge is to match capacity to demand as fleets expand while traffic growth slows, particularly on long-haul flights."
Etihad will also strengthen its North American network this year with the launch of flights to Chicago on September 2, which will become a daily non-stop operation from October 1. Chicago joins Etihad's established North American routes to New York and Toronto and boosts capacity to the continent by 35 per cent.
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