Flydubai To Take Off Next Year

Dubai’s long-awaited low cost airline named FlyDubai will make its debut by mid-2009. The new carrier, being created in accordance with a decree from the Ruler of Dubai early this year, will be the fifth national airline of the UAE, the sixth low-cost carrier taking to the skies from the Middle East region, and the second based in the UAE after Sharjah's Air Arabia. Kuwait's privately-owned Jazeera Airways was first budget airline to be based out of the Dubai International Airport the world’s fastest growing airport in 2007 in terms of international passenger throughput with a growth of 19.31 per cent handling a total of 34.34 million passengers. Shaikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the new low-cost airline, was quoted in an emailed statement that FlyDubai’s operations would potentially cover an area of some two billion inhabitants. It will support Dubai’s commercial and tourism sectors by serving a new set of travellers, and providing them with affordable air links to popular, high demand destinations. A lot of ground work has been done thus far, and I’m pleased to note that FlyDubai is on track to launch its first flight by mid-2009.