Bahrain Air to breakeven in 2010

Bahrain Air Managing Director, Ibrahim Al Hamer, announced the carrier is targeting break even in 2011, while the Board of Directors planning to increase authorised capital in coming months to USD79.6 million from USD53.0 million currently (Trade Arabia News Service, 13-Mar-2010). Bahrain Air has commenced a three-month trial of offering free inflight meals. Bahrain Air plans to launch three times weekly Bahrain-Dhaka and four times weekly Bahrain-Chittagong services on 16-Jun-2010, and daily Bahrain-Istanbul service - see Route Changes Table for more information. Mr Al Hamer reports the carrier has some "spare capacity", which it will use to expand its current network, without ordering new aircraft yet.

Bahrain Air: "Hopefully, the troubles of the world economic crisis are behind us and things are looking up, but we have to keep our fingers crossed as we look towards a complete recovery. We started off at the peak of an economic boom when the world was a happier place. Things were looking perfect at that time and we wanted to consolidate very fast. However, in just a few months, things started to go bad and in September that year, the economic crash happened. When the crash happened, every airline took a hit and we were not an exception. Suddenly, we realised there was twice as much capacity available as was the economic growth. That spelt doom for the industry. We still have some 'spare capacity' on the planes that we have and will look at expanding on the size of the present network, without ordering more aircraft. We expect more aircraft to come in but not in the next two years," Ibrahim Al Hamer, Managing Director. Source: Trade Arabia News Service, 13-Mar-2010.