Gulf Air, CEO, Martin Gauss at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit World 2025

Transcript

Martin Gauss:I'm very impressed with the brand of Gulf Air, which is 75 years, and what I see every day is a history which is amazing to me, and it builds a foundation actually for what I want to do. An amazing brand which I think has not been used to its full extent. As I'm surrounded by very large mega carriers like Qatar Airways, Emirates, but sitting in Bahrain, in the Kingdom of Bahrain, I want to focus on the kingdom and its connectivity. And I want to use the elements a smaller airline can use to be fast, agile, and implement a lot of things which we all are faced with, which is AI, the buzzword. But I really want to do a lot there. And I want to put the connectivity of Bahrain and Gulf Air together. So because I think that is missing at the moment, if I look at the globe and say, where are we flying to, then people would not necessarily say it's Bahrain. They would say the places we connect to. So that's one of the key focuses. When I came, there was a decision taken to order new Boeing 787-900s for the future, which is very good because that builds the backbone of our future widebody development. So we just signed an order of 15 plus 3 options for the future. We have then also an order which is still incoming aircraft of A321neos, which is replacing the CEO fleet. And that's it for the time being. But I'm developing, of course, something where we say, and what is then in the future the ideal fleet? But it's too early to say now. The key challenges are the same than I had in the previous job. It's a shortage of engines. supply chain issues. So it was Pratt Whitney engines on the A220 with airBaltic, and now it is Rolls-Royce engines on the 787. So that shortage of engines follows me, follows our industry, and then the shortage of spare parts also, because this is just an industry problem, which is a challenge for me next year. Otherwise, I'm in the budget preparation process for next year, and I will see in that process What other challenges are there? But on the upside, I see a lot of potential because the region is growing and we hear this also publicly, announcements of Saudi, of other airlines placing orders for aircraft for the future. So we will benefit from it being in the center of all of it. Yeah, so shareholder Kingdom of Bahrain represented through Mumtalaqat, the state sovereign wealth fund, which is my shareholder technically and a very strong team there. I have to say they onboarded me And they are very happy this week because they also own the Formula 1 team McLaren, and they just became world champions. So if you're the owner of a team which becomes world champion and you have the same owner going into an airline, you will see that there's a certain dynamic which hopefully I can use for the airline. I think we should leverage on this if we have the world champion in the same group. We should. And I'm pretty sure seeing what I see today, that that is not impossible to bring an airline with some of the precision, especially the precision and the speed when you're a small forward. So yes, I look at it, but then of course a high respect for Formula 1 and their efficiency and precision compared to airlines, but we should take an example from it. I really like it a lot. I always say I feel like an influencer when I look in the morning out of the window and have the skyline, have the weather. It's very welcoming, hospitality is great, so I feel very good in the first 6 weeks. But they say wait for the summer. I'm not afraid because country is very modern, very nice to me, so I really feel good. CAPA for me is meanwhile like a family because I've been so many years with CAPA. They built with me the previous brand, airBaltic, and I had a lot of opportunities to interact with industry leaders. And I just think about today, I had a couple of suppliers who are here to engage with the CEOs, and I have already 2 engagements where I think they will be an advantage for Gulf Air going forward. So the networking of the CAPA events is unmatched in our industry.

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