Ban on the run

Full article in PDF format

After months of threatening to roll out its laptop ban globally, the US Department of Homeland Security in June unveiled a raft of new security measures aimed at fighting terrorism without further inconveniencing passengers.

America’s new approach obliges foreign airports to adopt more stringent measures in relation to explosive-trace detection, canine security and vetting of airport personnel. Any gateways that fail to comply will be prohibited from allowing large electronic devices in the passenger cabins of flights to the US – echoing the measures placed on seven Arab countries plus Turkey in March.

At the time of writing, six of those affected countries – the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan – have been lifted from the ban, which was hastily rolled out after intelligence agencies uncovered a possible Daesh plot to smuggle bombs in the battery compartments of laptops...

Interview: Abdelhamid Addou, Royal Air Maroc CEO

Full article in PDF format: page 19-21 & cover

When King Mohammed VI appointed Abdelhamid Addou as chairman and chief executive of Royal Air Maroc in February, he fired the starting gun for a new era of growth at the flag-carrier after five tough years of restructuring.

The exact nature of that growth has not yet been finalised – management are promising to unveil a new vision in early 2017 – but, as Casablanca prepares to host the 49th annual meeting of the Arab Air Carriers’ Organisation in November, it is clear that Morocco’s flag-carrier is once again in the ascendance.

“The idea today is based on the new health of the company,” Addou told Arabian Aerospace during an interview at Casablanca’s old Anfa Airport, where the flag-carrier is headquartered...

Iran Air's dealmaker

Full article in PDF format

While everyone expected that the lifting of nuclear sanctions against Iran would unleash a flurry of deal-making, the scale of the ambitions laid out by flag-carrier Iran Air in January took many observers by surprise.

Within a fortnight of the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – an international agreement that lifts sweeping embargoes against the country – Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi had announced a heads-of-agreement between Iran Air and Airbus for 118 aircraft. A parallel deal with ATR covered up to 40 turboprops for the flag-carrier.

In June, yet another memorandum to buy 80 aircraft from Boeing brought Iran Air’s provisional orderbook to a jaw-dropping 238 planes – nearly ten times the number it deploys today...

Interview: Saeed Kalhori, Kish Air Deputy Managing Director

Full article in PDF format

Kish Island – pronounced "quiche" – has been a focal point for Iranian aviation since the 1970s, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, transformed the desolate Gulf island into a luxury casino and vacation resort.

Its small airport was specifically designed to handle the supersonic Concorde, which whisked foreign dignitaries in from Paris under a wet-lease agreement with Iran Air.

Much like the flag-carrier's own order for Concordes, however, the debauchery came to an end with the 1979 Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah and introduced more conservative values across the country. Kish now adheres to the same religious codes that govern the rest of Iran – alcohol is forbidden; hijabs are mandatory for females.

The island forged a new path in the 1980s by becoming one of Iran's free-trade zones. Governing body the Kish Free Zone Organisation (KFZO) now woos overseas investors with the promise of visa-free travel; 15-year tax exemptions; and no restrictions on foreign ownership.

Its overarching plan is to transform Kish into "the next Dubai" – an oasis for business and high-end tourism in the Persian Gulf...

Interview: Mahmoud Shekarabi, Qeshm Air CEO

Full article in PDF format

Qeshm Island, like its smaller but better-known neighbour Kish Island, doesn't feature in the travel bucket-lists of many international tourists.

Of the 397,000 people who flew to the island in the Strait of Hormuz last year, three quarters were Iranian nationals.

Qeshm's Dayrestan Airport ranks as only the 13th largest gateway in Iran by aircraft movements, despite being the main entry point for one of the country's much-touted free-trade zones. No foreign carriers fly there on a regular basis.

"Our customers are Iranian tourists mostly," confirmed Mahmoud Shekarabi, chief executive of Qeshm Air, the airline that provides two-thirds of seating capacity at the island. "Due to the sanctions there were some problems for businessmen to fly here [in the past].

"But I believe there's going to be changes. Before, there was tourism and just maybe some students. Now it's going to be businessmen, students, tourists, families...

Meraj shrugs off sanctions

Full article in PDF format

The lifting of nuclear-related sanctions against Iran may be a watershed moment for the country's civil aviation sector, but not all domestic operators are seeing immediate benefits.

Meraj Airlines, along with Mahan Air and Caspian Airlines, continues to be shackled by terrorism-related sanctions – a handicap that stems from its alleged support for Iranian military activity in Syria.

The company was founded in 2010 and partly functions as a scheduled passenger airline, deploying three Airbus A320s and two A300-600s from Tehran, Mashhad and Kish.

But it also operates VIP flights on behalf of the Iranian Government with a mixed fleet of A320-family jets, A340s, Boeing 737-200s, 707-300s and Falcon 50s. It is this facilitating role for the Government that has aroused the concern of the US Treasury, which accuses Meraj of ferrying "illicit cargo, including weapons" to the Syrian regime...

Nile Air follows the flow

Full article in PDF format

Egypt’s Nile Air is shrugging off difficulties in its home market and pressing on with a rapid expansion programme that has already seen its fleet triple in size over the past two years.

The privately-owned carrier has added five international destinations from its Cairo base so far in 2016: Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen in Turkey, Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Basra in Iraq, and Jizan and Abha in Saudi Arabia.

It has also entered the domestic Egyptian market by launching flights from Cairo to Hurghada and Sharm-el Sheikh, as well as connecting the latter resort with Riyadh and Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. Together with frequency hikes across the existing network, the airline’s capacity is up by 72% over the past six months alone.

“Our plan is stable growth year-on-year,” chief executive Ahmed Aly told Arabian Aerospace during an interview at the IATA AGM in Dublin...

Turkish Airlines stays the course

Full article in PDF format

The triple suicide bombing of Istanbul Ataturk Airport in June was a grim but predictable escalation of the security crisis in Turkey – a country fighting terrorism on two fronts while also grappling with political upheaval at home and a burgeoning refugee disaster.

That the airport made an attractive target for suspected Daesh militants should come as no surprise. The Syria-based jihadists had already struck tourists twice in Istanbul this year, sending suicide bombers to kill mostly German and Israeli holidaymakers at two of the city’s most popular attractions in January and March.

Dozens more Turkish citizens have been killed in attacks across the country as Daesh and Kurdish militant groups seek to destabilise the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

For flag-carrier Turkish Airlines, which has transformed Ataturk Airport into one of the world’s largest intercontinental hubs, the violence threatens to derail years of phenomenal growth matched only by the Persian Gulf carriers...

Interview: Safwat Mosallam, EgyptAir CEO

EgyptAir close to placing large narrowbody order: CEO

EgyptAir could order a "considerable" number of narrowbodies within days, chief executive Safwat Mosallam says, standing by its fleet renewal plans despite plummeting demand for tourism in the North African country.

"It's an ongoing process. Maybe in a few days there could be a good announcement," Mosallam told Arabian Aerospace on the sidelines of the IATA AGM in Dublin. "Until we finish negotiations we cannot announce."

EgyptAir originally planned to order up to 70 aircraft in 2016, but re-assessed its needs following the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268 in Sinai last October.

Interview: Mohamad El-Hout, Middle East Airlines Chairman

Full article in PDF format

In the decade following Lebanon's civil war, flag-carrier Middle East Airlines (MEA) failed to post one single annual profit.

When net losses peaked at $87 million in 1997, the country's exasperated Central Bank gave Mohamad El-Hout, its chief of financial asset development, the unenviable task of finding a manager to rehabilitate the airline.

Apparently unimpressed with the candidates he proposed, it then handed El-Hout the still-less enviable task of fixing MEA himself.

By anyone's standards, the unwitting chairman has performed phenomenally well. MEA has been profitable in each of the 13 years following his 2001 restructuring programme – a slash-and-burn overhaul that grounded lossmaking routes and shrunk the workforce by about 40% despite strong union opposition...

Iran Aseman follows the straight and narrow

Full article in PDF format

Though hardly known outside of the Islamic Republic, Iran Aseman Airlines is the largest domestic operator in Iran and potentially one of the prime beneficiaries of the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions.

The airline was established in 1980 and is headed by Hossein Alaei, the former navy chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Despite this apparent military link Aseman has escaped terrorism-related sanctions imposed by the US, which leaves it free to engage with western suppliers now that the broader nuclear embargo is over.

"Aseman has never been on any [terrorism] blacklist since the [Iranian] Revolution of 1979," stressed Mohammad Gorji, the airline's vice-president of executive affairs and fleet development. "We have always been following the rules and regulations...

Iran comes in from the cold

Full article in PDF format

One of the world's biggest pariah states came in from the cold on 16 January 2016, when the lifting of nuclear sanctions against Iran ushered in a new era of cooperation with the international community.

For the Islamic Republic's long-suffering civil aviation sector, reintegration will be nothing short of transformative.

More than three decades of sanctions have left Iran's airlines in a sorry state. Rigid enforcement action by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a wing of the US Treasury, pushed flag-carrier Iran Air and its 15 domestic rivals into the black market when buying and repairing aircraft.

The sector's ingenuity and perseverance outwitted the best efforts of a US Government that viewed every Iranian plane as a military threat, but success came at a price...

Interview: Abdul Mohsen Junaid, Saudia CEO

Full article in PDF format: page 19-22 & cover

When the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia began the privatisation of its flag-carrier in 2006, everyone understood that the mainline airline would be the last of the group's six business units to be sold off.

One decade on, the passenger division remains firmly under the wing of its well-endowed government owner. That is no surprise given the company's ongoing financial troubles: chief executive Abdul Mohsen Junaid freely admits that Saudia is "nowhere close to break-even on domestic routes" – a segment that accounts for two-thirds of its seating capacity.

But while Saudia-the-airline is not yet ready to leave the nest, Saudia-the-group has made impressive strides towards privatisation...

Interview: Abdullah Al Sharhan, Kuwait Airways CEO

Full article in PDF format

In 2014, the average age of an aircraft in Kuwait Airways' fleet was a whopping 20 years.

Today that figure has nearly halved thanks to the induction of a dozen new Airbus jets. Next year it will plummet close to zero as the last ageing units are replaced, completing the flag-carrier's re-birth after decades of political indecision and commercial stagnation.

"By mid-2017 we will go to a completely new fleet, and we will be youngest in the region," beamed new chief executive Abdullah Al Sharhan. "That is after being almost the oldest...

Interview: Sherif Fathy, EgyptAir Chairman

Full article in PDF format

Egypt's all-important tourism sector has been dealt successive blows since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, with repeated waves of political unrest warding off foreign visitors.

The country's tourism revenue is expected to have fallen below $7 billion in 2015 – a far cry from the $12.5 billion raked in the year before the revolution.

Flag-carrier EgyptAir has been front and centre of the downturn, sinking about $1.5 billion into the red since 2011 as holidaymakers turned to perceived safe-havens elsewhere in the region. The airline's fortunes had seemed to be rising in 2014/15, but were derailed again in October when a charter flight operated by Russia's Metrojet crashed in the Sinai Peninsula...

Interview: Samer Majali, SaudiGulf Airlines President

Full article in PDF format

Anyone who has been following the liberalisation of Saudi Arabia's aviation sector will be aware of one thing above all else: it moves at a glacial pace.

The kingdom's civil aviation authority, GACA, awarded economic licences to two start-up carriers back in December 2012, promising to inject much-needed competition in the local market. Al Qahtani Group-owned SaudiGulf Airlines and Qatar Airways-owned Al Maha Airways were selected from a shortlist of seven bidders.

There followed a woefully predictable succession of missed deadlines, with 2015 marking the third year in a row that both SaudiGulf and Al Maha have failed to get off the ground...

Cham Wings the last hope for Syrian expats

Full article in PDF format

Cham Wings is filling the void left by Syria's troubled flag-carrier but, as Martin Rivers reports, it could face the same obstacles to long-term viability.

Syria's Cham Wings has announced the addition of Oman and Sudan to its route network, as the Damascus-based carrier plays an increasingly prominent role in the local aviation sector amid declining fortunes at state-owned Syrian Arab Airlines.

Twice weekly flights to Muscat were launched on 3 September, and at the time of writing a once weekly service to Khartoum was scheduled to begin on 16 October...

Jordan deal holds few fears for Air Arabia

Full article in PDF format

Air Arabia moved a step closer to regional domination in May, when Queen Alia International Airport in Amman became the low-cost group's fifth base of operations.

Group chief executive Adel Ali admits that 2015 is a risky time to launch a subsidiary in Jordan, which borders Syria to the north and Iraq to the east. Tourism flows to the country have been depressed ever since the Arab Spring uprisings, and there is little prospect of a sustained recovery while the so-called Islamic State (IS) lays siege to much of the Levant.

Yet with geopolitical unrest never far from the headlines in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Ali is less concerned about Air Arabia Jordan's near-term challenges than its future prospects...

Interview: Paul Gregorowitsch, Oman Air CEO

Full article in PDF format

In the deteriorating war of words between America and the Gulf countries over bilateral traffic rights, it is easy to forget that European capitals have long imposed ceilings on the number of flights that Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways can operate to their airports.

The restrictions are not solely targeted at the 'big three' Gulf carriers. Even mid-sized operators such as Oman Air – which no-one seriously accuses of capacity dumping – have had their wings clipped on the continent.

Oman's flag-carrier currently serves Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport four-time weekly from its home base of Muscat. Repeated attempts to make the route a daily service have been rebuffed on the French side, prompting chief executive Paul Gregorowitsch to say he feels "discriminated against" by closed-skies policies.

Europe, he argues, has adopted a misguided approach to civil aviation that rewards legacy incumbents while handicapping emerging players from the Gulf...

Interview: Mohamed Bouderbala, Air Algerie CEO

Full article in PDF format

Air Algerie is hoping to draw a line in the sand with the appointment of new chief executive Mohamed Bouderbala. Martin Rivers and Vincent Chappard look at the challenges facing Algeria's flag-carrier.

Mohamed Bouderbala takes to the helm of Air Algerie following a tumultuous period at the state-owned flag-carrier, which suffered its worst ever disaster in 2014 and is coming under increasing pressure at home to improve its service levels and reliability...