Airline celebrates 25 years in Bahrain.
Schaher Murad, Regional Manager Bahrain and Eastern Province Saudi Arabia, in an interview on completion of 25 years of operations in the Kingdom of Bahrain said the financial meltdown has had impacted the airline’s business but the Middle East.
“Despite a slump in the global business, Middle East and the GCC countries were at the top in the last two years in terms of business and revenues,” he said.
Without going inter details about the exact growth in the region, Murad said it was a double digit growth.
“The Gulf markets are quite important for Lufthansa and despite a shrinking business world-wide, the Middle East region posted a growth even during the crisis,” Schaher Murad added.
“We are known to the region since the 1950’s and the markets like Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia will continue to be a vital part of Lufthansa business,” he said.
“The airline is also seeking strong business from Doha, Muscat and other additional flights from the existing destinations in the GCC.
“We have increased number of flights from four weekly to seven, Riyadh, Jeddah as daily flights as part of bolstering Lufthansa’s existing frequencies,” he said.
“On April 2, 1985, the first Lufthansa flight touched down on the tarmac of Bahrain International Airport in Manama, adding Bahrain to Lufthansa’s impressive global network. Today Lufthansa serves Bahrain seven times a week and passengers from the Northern Gulf region benefit from great flexibility on their travels to Frankfurt and 204 destinations world wide. The early morning arrivals allow passengers to spend a full day in Germany or to travel onward with lean connections to Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia.
“Bahrain is an important destination in Lufthansa’s growing Middle East portfolio”, Joachim Steinbach, Lufthansa’s Vice President Sales and Services, Southeast Europe, Africa, Middle East and Pakistan, in a statement said.
“The airport is a main gateway to Bahrain as well as to eastern Saudi Arabia – a region which has a strong foothold in the oil and energy as well as the financial sector,” Murad added. ”
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is an Aviation Group comprising around 400 subsidiaries and affiliates. The Lufthansa Group is dedicated to quality and innovation, safety and reliability. Headquartered in Germany, the Group operates in five business segments – passenger transportation, logistics, MRO, catering and IT services.
In the 2009 business year, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group welcomed more than 76 million passengers on board their flights, making it Europe’s leading airline grouping. Operating through the Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, London-Heathrow, Brussels and Zurich hubs, Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, bmi, Brussels Airlines and SWISS jointly serve 274 destinations in 104 countries on four continents. The Group fleet currently consists of more than 720 aircraft – on order are another 146, valued at a total of 13 billion euros at list price and scheduled for delivery between 2010 and 2016.
With its ongoing expenditure in fleet renewal, the Group is consistently making the fleet more cost-efficient and its operations more environment-friendly. End of 2009 the Lufthansa Group employed around 118,000 people. In the 2009 business year, it returned revenues totalling euro 22.3 billion. “