Saudi Arabia budget carrier to attract labour class

Local airline to face tough competition.

KARACHI:

The arrival of low-cost Saudi Arabian airline, Nasair, is likely to attract a number of Pakistani passengers to Saudi Arabia – especially from the labour class, owing to its low fares.

Nasair has announced the start of its operations from June 18 from Karachi. The airline will operate daily flights from Riyadh and Jeddah airports with the introductory price of SAR499 (Rs11,477) inclusive of all taxes. The addition of Karachi to the Nasair route network will bring the number of Nasair’s international destinations to 19 cities.

Chairman Travel Agents Association of Pakistan (Taap) Rana Abdul Ghafoor Khan said that the arrival of Nasair would affect the business of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on Saudi Arabian routes owing its low fares.

Although, they (Nasair) will eventually raise their prices, but even if they double it to SAR1000 (Rs23,000), it will still be half of PIA rates- which will certainly get a big pie of PIA’s traffic to Saudi Arabia, he said.

PIA rates are too high ranging from Rs55,000 (Karachi to Saudi Arabia) to Rs65,000 (Islamabad to Saudi Arabia). This would become a big concern for PIA owing to the fact that many Pakistanis travel to Saudi Arabia every year, he said.

“We must not forget that a lot of Pakistanis who travel to Saudi Arabia are from the labour class and they would prefer this low cost airline,” he stressed.

Only Shaheen Air from Pakistan’s private sector airlines operates on Saudi Arabian routes. Even then, Shaheen Air does not operate on Jeddah or Riyadh routes and it operates only on Islamabad to Dammam and Dammam to Karachi routes.

When contacted for comments, the PIA spokesperson said that Government of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have cleared the bilateral deal for Nasair. Since, these routes are owned by governments, there was a need for both the governments to sign an agreement and take this decision mutually, he said. “We are ready for competition with any airline,” he added.

The Saudi Arabian routes are very important for the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, he further said. Some 5.7 million people travel from PIA every year out of which 0.8 million only travel to Saudi Arabia which is 14 per cent of their total air traffic.

The total figure of travelers between the two countries is around 1.6 million, he said. Many of these travelers to Saudi Arabia go for Umrah (0.2 to 0.3 million) and Hajj (0.1 to 0.15 million) every year.

Supporting the view point of Chairman Taap, a PIA official said that this agreement will hamper the business of PIA because most of the Pakistani passengers travelling to Saudi Arabia are from the labour class. “It is obvious that labour class is price conscious,” he said.

Nasair, a subsidiary of the National Air Services (NAS), is a Saudi Arabian private low-cost airline. The airline launched it commercial flights on February 25, 2007 and is headquartered in Riyadh.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2011.