ACCORDING to Kuwait’s Directorate for Civil Aviation (DGCA) 2010 full-year report, which tracks and analyses passenger movement at Kuwait International Airport, more travellers chose to fly with Jazeera Airways in 2010 than any of its Kuwaiti competitors, making Jazeera Airways the largest Kuwaiti operator on the routes it served in the year.
In 2010, the airline carried 1.2 million passengers in total, or 15 per cent of Kuwait International Airport passengers, on a total of 14,156 flights across its network which includes high-demand business, leisure, family and weekend destinations such as Dubai, Bahrain, Beirut, Alexandria, Amman, Damascus, Istanbul, Sharm El Sheikh, Doha, Assiut, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Luxor, Mashhad and Sohaj, Jeddah and Riyadh.
The report does not include the Kuwait-Jeddah and Kuwait-Riyadh routes, where the airline has lower seat-allocation restrictions compared to other airlines.
In 2010, Jazeera had a 30 per cent market share on the Kuwait-Beirut route, a 33 per cent market share on the Kuwait-Amman route, a 48 per cent market share on the Kuwait-Alexandria route and a 42 per cent market share on the Kuwait-Damascus route.
The airline also continued to grab the largest market share among Kuwaiti airlines to business destinations with a 21 per cent share on the Kuwait-Bahrain route and 20 per cent on the Kuwait-Dubai route.
Jazeera Airways was the preferred airline to leisure destinations, leading with a 45 per cent share on the Kuwait-Sharm El Sheikh route and a 57 per cent share on the Kuwait-Luxor route and it continues to be the only Kuwaiti airline to serve cultural destinations in the Middle East such as Aleppo, Assiut and Deir Ezzor.
In December, Jazeera Airways launched three weekly non-stop flights to Sohaj, making it the airline’s fifth non-stop route to Egypt following Sharm El Sheikh, Alexandria, Luxor and Assiut.