Oman Air CEO Sees Profits Coming In 2027

Oman Air is determined that its four-year transformation plan aimed at restoring the oneworld global alliance carrier to profitability will remain on track despite the short-term impact of the Gulf crisis, the airline’s CEO Con Korfiatis tells Aviation Week.

The Muscat-based carrier recorded an operating profit in 2025, its first for 18 years, notes Korfiatis, who was brought in to lead Oman Air in May 2024. “Our north star in the transformation program sees us reaching profitability in 2027, and we are still going to push for that,” he says.

Part of that effort is launching new routes, including to Singapore from July 2 with the Boeing 737-8, marking its farthest single-aisle service to date.

While Oman Air was impacted by the U.S.-Iran conflict, Korfiatis notes that Oman’s airspace remained open. Although the carrier temporarily suspended flights to some airports, most of which have since resumed, the “rest of the network has been predominantly maintained.”

Managing the situation from late February when the war began required Oman Air’s team to “throw out history books and adopt a whole different approach to network and revenue management,” he says.

By early June, the airline reported load factors in the high 70s, down from pre-war levels in the high 80s. The carrier observed strong late booking trends and increased point-to-point traffic, aligning with Oman Air's strategic focus over recent years.

“We have not had to reduce capacity as much as we thought we would. The counter to that is the cost base issues we have had, predominantly the fuel price,” Korfiatis says.

Under the banner of “rebuilding a legacy,” Oman Air’s transformation plan aims to restore its financial health and reposition the airline as a “strategic enabler of tourism and economic diversification under Oman Vision 2040.”

“We tried a bit of a copycat strategy [in the past],” Korfiatis told delegates last month at the IATA Annual General Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, as it sought to compete with the major hub connecting carriers in Doha and Dubai.

“But it wasn’t working for us, and we’ve moved to create our own USP which is the country itself. Oman is unique and has unique tourism assets, and that’s what we want to exploit,” he says.

“We have moved very heavily into exploiting the point-to-point market,” he explains. This market has gone from being 15% of its traffic to nearly 60% in the space of 18 months. “That is our focus, and our growth opportunity,” he adds.

In 2025 Oman Air carried 5.8 million passengers, a rise of 7% over the previous year. This year it is continuing with its network growth plans with new routes to Singapore and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, beginning in July, with others in the works.

Following the delivery of its final Boeing 737-8 from its orderbook in January, the carrier now operates 18 of the type in a 33-aircraft strong fleet. It has nine 787-9s in service with six more to be delivered in late 2028/early 2029, according to Korfiatis.

Further fleet additions are in the cards as the carrier grows, but that is a “work in progress” for now, he adds.

“We hope that things will turn by the end of the year,” Korfiatis says. “We’ll salvage the best we can of this year and have a good year next year.”