Gulf Air, the national carrier of Bahrain, will be launching services to two new destinations, Alexandria and Aleppo, from June 2010.
Services to the Egyptian city of Alexandria will start on June 2 with four flights per week on Monday, Wednesday Thursday and Saturday. Flights to Aleppo in Syria will commence on June 17 and operate on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
The airline has also announced additional flights and more capacity on key destinations as part of its new summer schedule.
Gulf Air will increase its services to both Iran and Iraq. Tehran, Shiraz and Mashad will be served daily and Baghdad and Erbil services will increase respectively to five times and three times weekly. The airline will also increase frequencies to Kuala Lumpur offering a daily service.
Gulf Air will also deploy larger aircraft on key destinations across the Levant region including Beirut to meet the expected strong seasonal demand.
The airline’s chief commercial officer, Kyle Haywood, said: “We have decided to make Aleppo and Alexandria permanent destinations on the Gulf Air network following their successful introduction during last year’s summer seasonal programme. The addition of these two destinations will further strengthen our regional network and reinforce our position as the carrier with the largest number of Middle East connections through our Bahrain Airport hub.
“Despite the current difficult economic conditions we expect demand to be strong this summer and have re-worked our network accordingly. With the lease of the two Embraer E170 regional jets and the arrival of seven new A320 aircraft we have the operational flexibility and efficiency to achieve this.”
Gulf Air’s new Embraer aircraft, will be deployed on the airline’s high-frequency routes including Abu Dhabi, Muscat and Baghdad.