‘An airline of choice; not an airline of convenience’

Gulf Air has many targets to achieve this year and making global footprint tops all of them. In 2018, Gulf Air launched its new brand identity at the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix and introduced its first Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner along with a series of new destinations.

The airline also launched a new boutique strategy in early 2019. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Tribune,  Krešimir Kucko, Chief Executive Officer of the company, affirms that Gulf Air’s vision mainly focuses on becoming an airline of choice and not an airline of convenience. Excerpts: 

1) What were the key milestones reached by your company in 2019? 

Last year was indeed a very important year for Gulf Air. It saw the continuation of many efforts that we commenced a year earlier (2018) when we presented the new corporate strategy with clear corporate goals followed by the introduction of the new brand, the new logo, new uniform and most importantly brand new product. With this we introduced the new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and Airbus 320neo.

In the beginning of 2019, we presented and introduced the boutique concept, which is a very important part of the overall strategy along with offering the best in class flight experience to our passengers.  The main pillar in our strategy is being in service of the Kingdom of Bahrain as one of the key generators of economic growth. In short, we are ambassadors of our country. Our strategy is not to become another big airline in the region.

What we want is to provide more personalised passenger services. Our customers should get a unique experience, from the beginning to the end of the journey. As of now, we have seven Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners including the latest addition with its redesigned vintage version of the golden falcon livery..I must say that we are very proud of the number seven. The latest aircraft with its redesigned vintage version of the Golden Falcon Lockheed TriStar livery, represents Gulf Air’s iconic design from the 1970s.

With the arrival of this special aircraft, Gulf Air has revealed its 70th anniversary logo, which will be used in the airline’s marketing and promotional campaigns in 2020. So, overall, we put our efforts to be best in class and we are achieving this in our Falcon Gold class by offering first class service by industry standards. We also pay attention to our economy class passengers offering them state of the art IFE and substantial comfort during the flight..

Our goal is to become an airline of choice and not an airline of convenience. In our future growth we are carefully looking after needs of all our passengers but with special focus on millennials, corporate travellers and premium leisure passengers.

In that respect, last year we introduced flights to three new destinations - Malaga in Spain and Salalah in Oman as seasonal summer destinations and the Maldives as a year round destination. We also started our third daily service to New Delhi.      

2) What are the plans for the company in the present year? 

lenging but yet promising year. We expect significant growth in our long-haul operations. We have announced operations to Kuala Lumpur and Milan (daily basis), as well as Munich, Mykonos and Nice (seasonal).

At the same time as we are striving to maintain good balance between West and East destinations, we are also putting big efforts to maintain our position as the strongest airline with the regional network.

3) How many new planes will join the fleet this year?

Three more 787-9 Dreamliners will join the fleet this year. There are also plans to receive three Airbus 321neos, which will fly to destinations in Europe. They will be equipped with flatbed seats in the Falcon Gold class as part of our boutique concept.

4) What are the strategies in place to overcome stiff competition in the region and how you are managing relationships with other airlines and fuel consumption?     

With our new boutique business model, we are differentiating ourselves by quality not quantity. We are a member of Arab Air Carriers Organisation, which is one of the best associations for airlines in the region and one of the best associations for airlines globally. Their efficiency in protecting the interest of member airlines is very high particularly by dealing with fuel price on a group level. On the other hand, we have our own department to optimise the fuel consumption on daily basis. By introducing Airbus 320 neos and Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners we have significantly reduced our fuel consumption, on certain routes it goes up to 20 per cent.

5) What are your expectations with regard to the opening of the new terminal? 

We have high expectations of the new terminal as part of our boutique strategy. One of the key points is to secure seamless, faster transfer for all passengers and hopefully to become the fastest transferring airport in the region. We will also open a new lounge for Falcon Gold class passengers, which will offer unparalleled services comparing to other lounges. Our expectation would be that the lounge with its features would be attractive enough to make our passengers come to airport earlier than usual.    

6) Could you tell on the total passenger number you aim to achieve?

We plan to reach this year seven million as we reached last year almost 6.5 million.  

7) Could you speak on collaborations with other international airlines?

Commercial cooperation on different levels with our colleagues and friends from other airlines will help us set our global footprint with relatively midsized fleet. Besides joint ventures, which are the ultimate level of commercial cooperation with other airlines, the codeshare relationship is extremely important to realise our mission. At the moment, we have code-sharing ties with 13 global airlines including KLM, Etihad Airways, Thai Airways and Turkish Airlines. We signed an important agreement with India’s SpiceJet last year and we aim to explore new horizons of co-operation with them.   

8) Could you throw some light on Bahrainisation success the company has achieved?

Bahrainisation has always been one of the company’s top  priorities. Together with Tamkeen we have achieved great strides in developing Bahraini talent. In my opinion, we are definitely one the leading companies in the country in this matter, which is clearly shown throughout highly reached Bahrainisation percentage. For example, in some departments like second officers (pilots) and male cabin crew we have 100pc Bahrainisation followed by 95pc Bahrainisation amongst first officers. I would also like to add that we were very proud to fly the national soccer team to play at the Arabian Gulf Cup finals along with supporters on our flights and bring home the cup.