British Airways seeking Middle East growth

DUBAI // British Airways, the UK's flagship carrier, is looking to expand its flight operations in the Middle East and add new destinations. The airline currently flies to Bahrain, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Muscat and Kuwait and is evaluating options to increase flight frequencies and aircraft capacity on various Gulf routes. The first step of its regional expansion is to introduce an additional daily flight on its Dubai-London Heathrow route. It will also introduce a new Club Class - a £100 million (Dh645.8m) business class cabin overhaul - as a permanent fixture on the Dubai route, beginning next month.

British Airways operates a twice-daily service on its Dubai-London route, considered one of the most competitive long-haul routes in commercial aviation. The airline plans to service the Dubai route with a trio of Boeing 747, 767 and 777s. The new Club World would add a further 322 business class seats a week to British Airways's route capacity, said Paul Starrs, the commercial manager for the Middle East at British Airways.

Mr Starrs would not say which new regional destinations the airline was targeting or if there was a deadline attached to the launch of new flight operations. "I cannot say which destinations we are looking at. However, we want to start new operations as soon as possible," he said, adding the Middle East was an important high-growth market for the airline. Mr Starrs would not confirm recent media reports that the airline is engaged in talks with the Belgian national carrier, Brussels Airlines. "There might be something interesting to say in a few weeks time," he said.

Asked if British Airways was planning a takeover of Brussels Airlines, he said: "We're talking to a lot of people and a lot of airlines all the time." Apart from the Middle East, he said the Asia Pacific region and Indian subcontinent were other high-growth markets on the airline's radar. The carrier has already announced the launch of flights to Hyderabad in India. Mr Starrs said the airline had felt the pinch of the surge in fuel prices, but it would not compromise by cutting the costs of its service unnecessarily. "We are a premium full-service airline and we will continue to be," he said. "One way of doing that is to cut loss-making routes, which we did by closing the Tokyo flights."

British Airways's 2008 to 2010 business plan has factored in oil prices at US$85 a barrel. The commodity rose to more than $147 in July, but has since dropped to around $100. Mr Starrs said that airlines with stronger balance sheets could afford to have a better hedging policy, as well as a better chance of surviving the "current hard times". The airline, which has 12 Airbus A380s and 24 Boeing 787 Dreamliners on order, has not decided what the seat configuration will be for the new superjumbo's business class. "British Airways 747s have more business class seats than Emirates airline's Airbus A380," Mr Starrs said.

He said the A380 could be deployed on high-density routes such as Hong Kong, San Francisco and Los Angeles when the airline started receiving deliveries of the aircraft in June 2010. @email:skhan@thenational.ae