Airblue suspends operations on Karachi-Dubai route

Company official says competition making route commercially unviable

KARACHI: Airblue suspended its flight operations on Karachi-Dubai route for an indefinite period last week owing to stiff competition with half-a-dozen other airlines making flights commercially non-viable for the company, said an official on Wednesday.

The flight schedule of the airline to various destinations at domestic and international routes showed that it cancelled flight-118 from Karachi to Dubai on Wednesday. Similarly, it cancelled flight-119 from Dubai to Karachi for Thursday.



Airblue Director Corporate Planning Raheel Ahmed claimed that his airline did not suspend operations on the route in haste, but it was done after stiff planning so that passengers were not significantly troubled. “We are still ready to refund the fare charges if any passenger makes a claim,” he said.

“We have, for the time being, suspended flight operations on Karachi-Dubai route,” he said.

The official did not give any timeline for resumption of the flights. “We will see [when to resume the flights],” he replied.

He recalled that the airline had started a daily flight on the route sometime in 2005. He said the flight operations were suspended on the ground that they had become commercially non-viable. “There is too much traffic on the route,” he said.

Around half-a-dozen airlines, including Emirates, Fly Dubai, Air Arabia, and Pakistan International Airlines are flying on the same route. They are cumulatively making “some 15 daily flights from Karachi to Dubai/Sharjah.”

Ahmed said there was no shortage of passengers on the route. “If you would charge them only one rupee as travelling fare on the route, they would come to you, but this [cheaper fare] is not possible,” he said.

He said airblue is still flying to Dubai from Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar, as operations on the route remain commercially viable.

He said the airline was using A320 and A321 airplanes on Karachi-Dubai route, as each of them have a capacity to accommodate 180 passengers.



An industry source added that the Middle East-based airlines were offering below cost fare charges on this and other routes with the availability of jet oil at comparatively lower prices in the Middle Eastern region. “This factor forced airblue to quit on the route,” he said.

Secondly, governments have - from time-to-time - allowed the Middle Eastern airlines to fly to much more destinations in Pakistan without realising that the permission would make Pakistan-based airlines redundant on the routes. “Rulers are doing this to fulfil their friendships,” he said.

Another source added that airblue stopped flying on Karachi-Dubai route due to shortage of planes in its fleet. “It is operating with many planes on wet lease (rent) from other airlines and it has now shifted its focus from Dubai to UK destinations.”

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15^th, 2016.

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