Jazeera Airways Revises Airbus Order

Jazeera Airways Group, parent company of Jazeera Airways and Sahaab Aircraft Leasing, has said it is expecting to receive four brand new Airbus A320s between 2012 and end of 2014 as part of the airline’s fleet modernization program. The airline had already taken delivery of one A320 in January 2010 as part of this order.

Chairman Marwan Boodai said, “Having one of the Middle East’s youngest fleets is a core component of our customer offering. Our target is to phase out aircraft that have more than 6 years of operation, and we have already begun phasing out aircraft as part of this program.”

The airline revised the order it placed for A320s in 2007 from 40 aircraft to 15 aircraft.

Boodai said, “The decision to resize our fleet is the right decision for Jazeera Airways at the time being, given the overcapacity we’ve seen in the market in 2009 and 2010 when we saw close to half of the seats offered by our peers on the routes we operated were being flown empty. However, we might revisit this decision in the future as Airbus introduces new A320 models to the market.”

Jazeera Airways reported a third quarter (Q3) net profit of KD4.4 million, the airline’s best Q3 on record, and a fourth quarter (Q4) net profit of KD2 million, making the second half of 2010 the airline’s best second half since 2008.

Established in 2005, Jazeera Airways Group is a Kuwait Stock Exchange-listed company with over 12,000 shareholders. The company has 11 fully-owned Airbus A320s in operation, distributed between its airline business, Jazeera Airways (6 aircraft), and its fully-owned leasing business, Sahaab Aircraft Leasing (5 aircraft). Sahaab has assets placed with Virgin America, Sri Lanka Airlines, and Jazeera Airways.

In 2010 the airline carried 1.3 million passengers in total, or 15% of Kuwait International Airport passengers, on a 14,156 flights across its network that includes high-demand business, leisure, family, and weekend destinations such as, Dubai, Bahrain, Beirut, Alexandria, Amman, Damascus, Istanbul, Sharm El Sheikh, Doha, Assiut, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Luxor, Mashhad and Sohaj, Jeddah and Riyadh.

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