Gulf Air to Open Link to Kabul

Gulf Air is to offer flights between Bahrain and Kabul this summer with the launch of a new four times weekly connection. The new link to Afghanistan will be its sixth route inauguration since the beginning of the year, adding to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Isfahan, Iran; Basra, Iraq; Milan, Italy and Geneva, Switzerland. It will use an Airbus A320 configured with 16 Falcon Gold and 120 Economy class seats.

“The launching of our service to Kabul follows extensive safety and security audits, and further demonstrates our strategy to connect the Kingdom of Bahrain with niche and under-served markets within the region that have high growth potential,” said Samer Majali, Chief Executive Officer, Gulf Air. “The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has seen some remarkable growth recently and the government is committed to facilitate and promote the development of a dynamic, competitive private sector by closely working in partnership with local businesses to revitalise and expand the economy.”

The new link will bring commercial opportunity for Afghanistan’s well known traditional industries such as carpets and gems, and the industrial sectors namely construction and engineering, IT/telecommunications, transportation and mining, to develop. In addition it will support the many international corporations and organisations working on several multi-million development projects in the country, as well as the vast Afghan community living and working in the Middle East, North America, Europe and Asia.

Gulf Air will actually be the first ‘full-service’ commercial airline to provide connections from Kabul across the entire GCC network, the Levant region, Europe, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ariana Afghan Airlines and Safi Airways currently have schedules planned to Europe but restrictions on flights by Afghan-registered companies into the European Union mean these schedules are not currently being fulfilled.

Source: Flightbase (April 14 – 20, 2011)

As the table above shows, there are currently 163 weekly flights scheduled from Kabul to 20 destinations with frequencies dominated by New Delhi, Dubai International and the domestic cities of Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-i-sharif. The largest operators from the city by capacity are local entities Pamir Airways, Kam Air, Safi Airways and Ariana Afghan Airways, but foreign operators Air India, Pakistan International Airlines and low-cost operators Air Arabia and flydubai also serve the market. The Afghan Civil Aviation Authority is understood to have recently revoked the operating licence of Pamir Airways as part of an ongoing investigation into corruption at Kabul Bank.