A Sample Feature From Aviation News

AIRLINE PROFILE
GULF AIR – going for gold

Formed in 1950 by an enterprising British pilot, Gulf Air has experienced some turbulent times in recent years, but its future looks a lot brighter with a new management team and modern aircraft to help re-establish itself as the pre-eminent airline in the area. The Editor recalls the airline’s last three decades as a major Arab carrier and reports on its current and future plans.*

Above: Aircraft of the two commercial companies that form Gulf Air parked at Dubai – a gold-nosed A330-200 of the parent with a white-finished Boeing 767-300ER of Gulf Traveller, the recently-formed subsidiary.

Below: In the colours of the airline’s predecessor, Gulf Aviation, Avro Anson G-VROE of Air Atlantique appeared at Paris ’99 to coincide with the delivery of Gulf Air’s first Airbus A330-200, A40-KA. (Photos, Av News).

A NEW Landor-designed livery making full use of one of the world’s most striking airline emblems, the desert falcon, is a clear statement that Gulf Air intends to return to its former leading position among the airlines based in the Middle East. It has experienced some difficult times, but the fight-back is now well underway. Hauling the company back towards profit is 47-year-old Australian James Hogan, a businessman with the drive to succeed and a no-nonsense approach when it comes to getting things done. He is in the first year of a three-year contract to turn Gulf Air from a sluggish, loss-making operation into ‘the best airline in the Middle East’ and his first initiatives are encouraging, both to the staff and to the company’s backers. Among the moves is the formation of a subsidiary, Gulf Traveller, which began services as an all-economy class airline on June 1, 2003, an improved cabin service on Gulf Air flights, particularly for First Class passengers, and the implementation of self-service check-in kiosks, the first Middle East operator to do so.

Formation and transition

Gulf Air has strong connections with the UK. It was founded by a former RAF pilot, Freddie Bosworth, as an air-taxi service in 1950, gradually expanding into a small commuter operation based in Bahrain and flying to Doha (in Qatar), Sharjah (UAE) and Dhahran (Saudi Arabia). Seven Avro Ansons and three de Havilland DH.86B four-engined biplanes formed the fleet, but more modern aircraft were needed. So Bosworth chose the de Havilland Dove but while preparing to introduce the type into service he was killed on a demonstration flight at Croydon on June 9, 1951.

BOAC subsequently took a 22% stake in the company and over the next 20 years introduced a succession of more up-to-date aircraft as services expanded throughout the Gulf region. Oil is synonymous with the Gulf and as the governments of the four states served by the airline began to benefit from the money pouring in, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the UAE purchased Gulf Aviation from BOAC and established the company as the local national carrier, naming it Gulf Air and starting operations on January 1, 1974.

By 1976, Gulf Air was an international carrier, spurred on by the oil boom. The fleet comprised four Vickers VC10s, three BAC One-Elevens, two Lockheed TriStar 200s and five Boeing 737-200s. Two years later the TriStar fleet had doubled, replacing the VC10s, and the 737s had increased to nine, resulting in the phasing out of the One-Elevens. The airline joined IATA in 1981 and to further the employment of an indigenous workforce, an aeronautical engineering training programme was set up and in 1984 the first graduates were able to perform major overhauls on 737s.

Open skies and tragedy

Then, in 1983 Gulf Air took two hard knocks. In June, the UAE Federal Cabinet was asked by Dubai and Sharjah for the setting up of a national airline to compete with Gulf Air under an open skies proposal for the area. In a petulent move, both states refused to recognise Gulf Air as their flag carrier. More worrying for the Bahraini operator was the mooted suggestion that Qatar, one of the four major shareholders in Gulf Air, was also interested in having its own national airline. The outcome of that meeting, held in Dubai, was the establishment two years later of Emirates, which turned out to be Gulf Air’s biggest competitor in the region (some years ahead, in November 1993, Qatar Airways was formed, further diluting traffic in the region and adding to the competition). The second difficulty faced by the airline was the tragic loss on September 23, 1983, of a Boeing 737-200 with all 111 passengers and crew on a flight from Karachi to Abu Dhabi, ending the companies exemplary safety record. This was the UAE’s first civil aviation disaster.

Apart from the Boeings, Gulf Air is an all-Airbus operator, flying A340s (top) since 1994, A320s (above) from ’92 and the A330s from ’99 (below). The three colours of the owner states that formed the earlier scheme have given way to the striking livery below, launched in April 2003. (Photos, Gulf Air/Av News).

Engineering needs

Meanwhile, recognising the need for a modern, efficient engineering company in the area Gulf Air, together with the government of Abu Dhabi in a 40/60% ownership deal, helped establish the Gulf Aviation Maintenance Company, better-known as GAMCO, in 1987. Gulf Air continues to use the services of this organisation and it was GAMCO which undertook the recent repainting of the Airbus A330 in the new colours and the Gulf Traveller scheme on the Boeings. By the time the airline celebrated its 40th birthday in 1990, the 767s had begun to arrive and with them, new cabin staff uniforms and more destinations. Passenger figures rose to more than 3m, a 2.4% increase over 1989. The airline was now flying to Athens, Cyprus, Istanbul, London and Paris in Europe; Bangkok, Colombo, Manila, Singapore and Sydney in the Far East and Bombay and Delhi in India. Beirut in the Lebanon and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia were also served as well as more local destinations around the Gulf.

By 1994, the airline was flying to more than 50 points with some 40 aircraft, the latest arrivals being 12 Airbus A320s and more 767s to take the fleet to 18. It had also ordered six four-engined A340s and, in November 1993, six Boeing 777s, both with options which would double the individual fleets if taken up. The former began deliveries in May 1994 and opened the way for Gulf Air to fly 15hr flights to New York from Abu Dhabi and Bahrain in June. As predicted, the airline reached the 5m passenger mark in 1995, despite suspending its twice-weekly Manchester-Abu Dhabi service due to heavy losses on the route. It also decided that the order for 777s was too costly for its financial situation and cancelled the contract for the six aircraft in February 1995. In fact, by 1997 the airline was continuing to struggle with increasing debt, but in line with other airlines, code-sharing was pursued and following the deal with American Airlines in 1994 and with Cyprus Airways in ’96, a similar agreement was signed with British Midland the following year, allowing passengers through-ticketing across the UK.

Route development continued with services to Nepal launched in 1998 and to the Pakistan cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar in 1999, the same year that saw in June/July the delivery of six A330-200s. Along with the new Airbuses, Gulf Air also introduced a new Balmain-designed uniform in blue, replacing the beige colour which first appeared in 1990. Then on August 23, 2000, Gulf Air lost an A320, when A40-EK crashed into the sea at Bahrain, killing all 144 people on board. This was doubly tragic as the airline was celebrating its 50th year of operations and had marked the occasion with some eye-catching colour schemes on some of its aircraft. This was the low point in the company’s fortunes and the then current management was faced with doing what it could to stave off dropping revenues in the face of increasingly buoyant results from its closest competitors.

*Past features on Gulf Air and its predecessor, Gulf Aviation, appeared in AIR Pictorial in May 1977, December 1994 and July/August 1996. A review on Gulf Aviation appears in the September 2003 Aviation News.

For the rest of this article please see the August 2003 issue.