Celebrating the airline’s 60th anniversary, Bahrain national carrier Gulf Air presented its board of directors a report of significantly improved performance across several areas for the start of 2010.
Despite the economic downturn which affected almost all business sectors, particularly air travel, Gulf Air carried around 5.7 million passengers in 2009, which is slightly more than the number of passengers carried in 2008. The revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) also showed a better performance by registering 2.1 per cent growth.
Overall flight punctuality reached 82.5 per cent during the year registering an increase of 12.5 per cent over 2008 and technical dispatch reliability reached 98.1 per cent, well above the industry norms.
CEO Samer Majali also presented a report for January and February 2010 in which the company recorded impressive performance.
The airline has made an overall cost-saving of 12.3 per cent – a significant positive performance indicator. The seat factor has also registered a growth of 4.1 per cent compared to the same period last year and the airline flew 870,000 passengers.
Majali said: “The performance results are a positive indication that our new strategy is working well and we are on the right track.
We were able to reduce overall cost due to our careful forward planning, prudent cost-saving measures and efficient performance optimisation and, of course, a great teamwork.
“As we celebrate our Diamond Jubilee year, we are creating an airline for the next 60 years and beyond – an airline that offers excellence in quality and service as well as excellent value.
Towards achieving this, we have launched several initiatives in recent months. The introduction of regional jets into our fleet is a major step in this direction, bringing a new dynamic to travel experience in the region, we will be able to offer more regional destinations for our customers while maintaining our leadership position as the best-connecting carrier across the region.
“We have also embarked on a comprehensive revamping of our products and services onboard. The introduction of the new premium class, ‘Falcon Gold’ is the first step in our objective to offer our customers a superior and more consistent product and enhanced travel experience across our entire wide and narrow body fleet.”
He also highlighted several other positive developments at Gulf Air. “Our Bahrainisation level has reached 53 per cent and our efforts to encourage and employ more Bahrainis are paying off, the recently launched campaign to recruit Bahrainis for our customer-facing positions has been received well looking at the number of candidates who applied.
“At the same time we are conscious of the financial impact due to the total number of employees we have on our roll.
We have started optimising on this front and as a result, we now have around 300 fewer staff on our strength than last year. We were able to achieve this due to our strict contract-renewal criteria, freeze in recruitment except critical positions and freezing positions that fall vacant through natural attritions such as resignations and retirements.
“We have launched a comprehensive customer service training programme across the company so that every employee understands the importance of high-quality customer service in our business and gets professionally trained. Other initiatives include the recent recruitment and training of 125 Bahrainis to Gulf Air’s world wide call centre programme, training company employees within Tamkeen’s Career Progression Programme, as well as providing training facilities to the Aeronautics Maintenance Engineering Programme.”