Long considered the little brother of the Middle East’s ‘Big Three’, Oman Air is focusing on India to boost its cargo operations
A small player in the air cargo sector when compared to the big boys – Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways – from its neighbourhood, Oman Air is keen to ramp up its India operations. Not without reason. Mohammed Al Musafir, Oman Air’s Senior Vice President, Cargo Commercial, put it rather bluntly: “Our main cargo drivers from an origin perspective are Far East, Indian Sub-Continent and Europe are the European market that contributes one-third to our revenues and predominantly India where we are very strong with 11 online stations.” He went on to point out that the carrier transported “around 17,000 tonnes per annum from India and around 2800 tonnes per annum into India routed through our hub in Muscat”. The focus, he emphasised was on “key markets like India where we offer 180 flights per week. As a matter of fact we concentrate on connecting India with Europe and Middle East via Muscat along with Asian destinations”.
The India operations apart, Al Musafir believes that “our new service to Muscat-Guangzhou, Manchester and Nairobi will be attractive for the freight industry, upping our volumes further”. Planning for such large volumes would mean induction of freighters. In fact, former Oman Air CEO Paul Gregorowitsch (he resigned suddenly in the middle of October) had said in a recent interview with Cargo forwarder that the airline was looking at freighters and the model – B777 freighters or an Airbus plane – was still being decided.
Al Musafir too, was clear. He said, “While we currently operate strictly on a belly hold capacity assembly, we are in the process of studying the possibility of adding freighters to our fleet to supplement our growing cargo operations.”
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