Gulf Air set to launch Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran routes

Bahrain's Gulf Air has announced plans to launch new routes to Ethiopia, Iraq and Iran, to be rolled out later this year.

Following the recent announcement that it would start services to Aden and Colombo, the carrier said it would add Addis Ababa, Basra and Isfahan to its network.

Gulf Air CEO Samer Majali services to Isfahan would begin on October 30 with three weekly flights while the Basra route would start operations the following day. Addis Ababa will be served from December 6 with five weekly flights.

"The launching of these five new destinations further demonstrates our new strategy to identify and serve niche and under-served markets and, create potentially high yield city-pairs by providing direct service to Bahrain and beyond," said Majali.

Majali added that as part of its new strategy, the carrier had cut nearly 1,000 staff over the past year while Bahrainisation rates had increased to 52 percent.

He said: "Let me assure you we will continue to identify new markets, improve our customer service delivery standards and, introduce new products on the ground and in the air."

Majali added: "In the last 13 months we have launched services to 11 new destinations; this is something that we are proud of; we haven't opened so many routes in such a short timeframe since 1976."

He said that the carrier had also suspended four routes that were no longer commercially viable.