(Bloomberg) — Bahrain’s national carrier predicted travel demand through its hub will recover in coming weeks after the Iran war disrupted passenger flows across the region and forced the airline to halt operations.
For July, “we’re seeing higher forward bookings week on week than the year before,” Gulf Air Chief Executive Officer Martin Gauss said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro. For now, demand into the winter months is at normal levels, he said. Still, load factors are currently down 3% compared with last year.
The airline had to stop flying out of the kingdom for 40 days, set up operations in Saudi Arabia and move planes out of Bahrain when the war started and the country was caught up in the line of fire.
The airline “has not deliberately reduced prices, because we didn’t have to” to attract customers, Gauss said. Fares have ticked up because of higher fuel prices, though the airline doesn’t decide ticket pricing based on fuel, “the market decides on the ticket price,” he said.
Airlines across the Persian Gulf have started to recover capacity after the airspace over some of the busiest travel hubs in the world reopened. Neighboring Emirates, the world’s largest carrier, has yet to fully rebuild its service and is operating at about 75% of its pre-war capacity.
Gauss joined the carrier in November, only a few months before the war started, with a mandate to revive the loss-making airline and introduce a more premium product. He previously ran Air Baltic AS.
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