Arab News, Monday, Nov 07, 2022 | Rabi Al Thani 12, 1444
flydubai to kick off flights to key destinations across Europe, Asia in 2023
Emirates:
Emirati government-owned low-cost airline flydubai has announced its plans to
kick off flights to key destinations across Europe and Asia in 2023.
New destinations include European cities such as
Milan and Cagliari in Italy as well as Corfu in Greece. Asian tourist hotspots
such as Pattaya and Krabi – both of which are in Thailand –are also part of the
new planned routes.
In addition to this, the low-cost carrier will
also resume flights to Al Hofuf city located in Saudi Arabia as of Nov. 24.
The launch of the six new routes will elevate
flydubai’s network to a total of 113 destinations across 53 countries. This
figure poses the largest number of destinations the airline has served since its
launch back in 2008.
Commenting on the expansion of the airline’s
network, flydubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith, said: “Dubai’s aviation industry has
made a swift recovery, and our agility combined with our strong business model
has enabled us to grow our operations and to achieve this significant milestone.
With 113 destinations now available to book, we look forward to offering our
passengers more options for travel across our ever-growing network.”
Since the beginning of 2022, flydubai started
flights to over 20 destinations including but not limited to Pisa and Catania in
Italy, Osh in Kyrgyzstan as well as Samarkand and Namangan in Uzbekistan.
Earlier this year, flydubai reported a strong
performance in the first quarter, as the low-cost carrier posted a 114 percent
rise in passengers from the same period last year, the airline said in a
statement.
The airline said it operated 19,000 flights and
carried 2.35 million passengers during the period.
Moreover, the airline also witnessed an increase
in demand in the first quarter for connecting traffic with 43 percent of the
passengers connecting to the carrier’s network compared to 28 percent for the
same period last year.
Last year, the airline signed an agreement for
handling services with the Saudi Ground Services Co. for a period of five years,
with a value exceeding 100 million Emirati dirhams ($27.2 million), Al Bayan
paper reported.
Under the agreement, SGS will undertake ground
handling services for flydubai in all the Kingdom’s airports including the 11
airports in which the airline operates.