The national airways, Kuwait Airways Corporation, officially inaugurated a new line to the city of Chittagong in Bangladesh last week, amid an upbeat atmosphere that the new service to the country's largest city will be successful.
The KAC organized an exploratory flight for the national media, including Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), along with five leading travel agents.
Bader Al-Amiri, the KAC Regional Director, said in a statement to the Kuwaiti journalists during the trip, the new destination was chosen because of the huge number of potential clients seeking to travel via Chittagong, the main port city in the mainly-Muslim nation of 160 million souls.
The KAC used to organize a single flight per day to the capital Dhaka, and dispatch the travellers to Chittagong by land.
After examining the situation, the KAC strategists decided to organize two flights per week from Kuwait to Chittagong, Thursdays and Saturdays, with back flights on Fridays and Sundays.
The five-hour flight passes through the air spaces of Iran, Pakistan, northern india and Bangladesh. The flight ends up at the newly-built Chittagong airport, that had been built with Japanese assistance.
Al-Amiri expressed hope that the new flight would prove profitable in the shadow of fierce competition by several Gulf airways, securing services for some three milion nationals, including 250,000 workers, of this large Asian nation.
He expressed gratitude for the government of Bangladesh for extending work hours at the new airport, making the services available round the clock.
Although the competition is robust in this aerial services market, the Kuwaiti airways is forecast to control up to 80 percent of the market volume.
Al-Amiri indicated that the national airways mapped out the plan for launching flights to the new destination after the contruction of the new airport, with up-to-date specifications such as the capacity to accomodate large aircraft.
For his part, Abdel Razzak Al-Amiri, the KAC Assistant Director of Marketing and Sales, said the airways employs large aircraft, Airbus-300s, with a capacity to board 250 passengers.
Samiur Razzak, District Sales Manager, said the KAC had launched a major promotion campaign for the new flight. - Kuna