Jazeera Airways eyes expansion in Bangladesh

Jazeera Airways plans to keep expanding its footprint in Bangladesh, particularly in its second-largest city of Chattogram, as it targets to serve a huge number of expatriates from the region currently living and working in Kuwait.

"Though we started operations in Dhaka right in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, we saw a very good demand as there are 200,000 Bangladeshi nationals living and working in Kuwait," said Bharathan Ravindran, vice president for sales of Jazeera Airways, during an interview with The Daily Star.

He was in the port city yesterday, along with Andrew Ward, vice president for marketing and customer experience of the airline, to launch a direct service between Chattogram and Kuwait.

An inaugural ceremony was held at the Radisson Blu Chattogram Bay View Hotel.

Kuwait's leading low-cost private airline launched its direct service to Dhaka in October 2020.

The new service with three flights a week -- on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays -- between the two destinations offers a chance to Kuwait-bound migrant workers and other passengers to avail themselves of direct flights from Chattogram after a long gap.

The inaugural flight arrived at the Shah Amanat International Airport at 8:45am with fully loaded with 156 passengers and departed at 9:45am with the same number of passengers.

The airline started its operations on the Dhaka-Kuwait route with three flights a week. It is now running daily operation.

Ravindran says the demand has been very steady since the beginning of the service. "We have been able to manage a very high load factor in Dhaka."

The success of the Dhaka-Kuwait route prompted the airline to roll out its second service in the country.

"In fact, it has exceeded our expectations in terms of seat factor. We were able to achieve a success that we predicted could have taken three to four years. We managed to achieve that in a year time and that has encouraged us to fly into Chattogram as well," Ravindran said.

Chattogram is the second-largest city of Bangladesh. And there are a lot of people from this part living and working in Kuwait.

"So, we see a huge opportunity here and we would like to seize that being the only operator between Kuwait and Chattogram," said Ravindran.  Andrew Ward says the Kuwait-Chattogram route was not served before.

"So, it now really makes a lot easier for Bangladeshis to get into Kuwait or those who in Kuwait to get back home rather than going through an indirect route which could take up to nearly 15 to 20 hours of travelling because the connectivity is very poor."

The travel time would be five and a half hours to six hours, according to Ward.

Ravindran says the market in Chattogram is big enough for them to run two flights daily.

"Currently, it is about 200 passengers a day on the route, but there is potential that it can go over 300 passengers a day."