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Middle East Airlines chairman and CEO Mohamad El-Hout, pictured at the IATA AGM in Rio de Janeiro.
RIO DE JANEIRO—Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines (MEA) is well advanced to launch its LCC offshoot Fly Beirut with an initial fleet of up to six aircraft in June 2027, Chairman and CEO Mohamad El-Hout told Aviation Week at the IATA Annual General Meeting in Rio de Janeiro.
Fly Beirut will operate Airbus A320s in a 180-seat all-economy class configuration. The first of three aircraft sourced from lessors will arrive by mid-June in advance of next year’s launch, El-Hout said. These aircraft will be used by MEA to help inaugurate its new services to Berlin and Amsterdam, which will begin in June and July, before being transferred to Fly Beirut next year.
Fly Beirut will be established as a differentiated low-cost product in the way many network carriers have sought to capture a market segment not suited to the legacy player.
“They should be differentiated. One is low cost; one is a legacy carrier,” El-Hout said. “The seating is different. The timing is different; it will have cheaper prices. The reservation system is different. It will work [in Lebanon].”
The LCC will be wholly owned by MEA, which is majority owned by Lebanon’s central bank Banque du Liban, but managed separately from the flag carrier.
“I want to have a totally independent commercial management for Fly Beirut, so they have to compete together,” El-Hout said.
The idea for MEA to create an LCC first cropped up a decade ago, but the climate then meant it was not the right time. “Now, we are going to start. The governor of the central bank, the minister of transport and the people of Lebanon are very happy with it,” he said.
El-Hout, who has been methodical and cautious about ensuring an incremental pace of growth at MEA to ensure it continues its multi-decade run of profitability, is persuaded about the merits of Fly Beirut. “However, I was really a little bit reluctant because of the situation. I believe that during a war period, it is not possible to expand. I hope by next year the situation will be much better,” he continued.
Fly Beirut will operate in tandem with MEA on some routes and then take over a few of those services altogether, as well as launch its own. The thinking is that destinations like Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen and Dusseldorf will be flown by Fly Beirut where demand for business class is lower.
With a destination like Paris, the idea is that MEA could operate, say, two frequencies to satisfy the business market while Fly Beirut would take a third frequency, he said.
El-Hout will not give Fly Beirut a target for its fleet size. Its growth trajectory “depends on the situation in Lebanon,” he noted, which is the same way MEA has been managed for years.
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