Dubai Airshow 2023: flydubai CEO discusses airline's growth and expansion

Transcript

00:00I feel of course extremely honoured that we are in FlyDubai first. I've been entrusted

00:08by His Royal Highness and Sheikh Ahmed entrusted to operate wide body and go to this level.

00:15This meant that the people of FlyDubai have done a good job to deserve this honour and challenge.

00:22Very excited because this challenge definitely will always bring the best in us and honoured

00:31to be able to do that. From our point of view, I mean by the time I think we get the aircraft

00:36we will be 18 years old as an airline so we are coming of age and again that is a fantastic sort

00:43of time to grow and expand what we have done in FlyDubai where we challenge the convention

00:51and created the airline that we have right now came with of course support that we got

00:59from the infrastructure that we have here in Dubai and all of that and we think

01:04this ingredients is also right there for the future to allow us to to do more and succeed

01:14more and we always are guided by the principle embedded in us by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed

01:20bin Rashid Al Maktoum where His Highness always said if you stand still people will pass you by

01:26and we will never want to stand still and we want always to take the challenge on to

01:31push ourselves and take advantage of the facilities position that the United Arab

01:38Emirates found itself and our leaders position us here in Dubai. What happened right now

01:44you can understand it based on all of the logistics and distribution chains and the

01:54coming back life after Covid. I mean we see this not only with the aircraft with everything

02:01and we understand that that is the case but we also feel that we are in the final phase

02:10of this problem and things will be better moving on. Boeing is one of the greatest

02:20companies in the whole world let alone in the airline business. Of course they have high

02:26standards of course they will be better but you also realistic it's not only a Boeing issue

02:31all the supply chains they will be all right we are very confident. These aircraft give us a scope

02:38to dream and then gives us a bigger area to sort of focus on and we are extremely

02:50sort of confident and we trust that the you know what Dubai composition of traffic

02:5910 years ago 20 years ago is not the same now and it's going to continue to grow and change

03:05and we believe that change and growth okay you have enough there for us to

03:13to expand and take on a bigger map of the world to sort of fly to so yeah majority of the routes

03:23will be new longer haul traffic than what we currently have and then there will be some

03:30routes where we currently are short in terms of capacity with capacity restraints you know you

03:38get flexibility by having this aircraft so wherever we have still a lack of flexibility by that time

03:45we can deploy this aircraft that's why a smaller part of this idea where we deploy is on our

03:51current routes majority of it will be new. In FlyDubai we are committed to operate to both

03:57airports and I was saying to the guys you know if you heard last year we had the world cup here

04:02and what an exciting time so it's always nice to come and operate we have very specific plan

04:10to operate here and grow and this takes into account the availability of capacity in Dubai

04:18airport and what will be available here and our future plan to grow it will be very strong fourth

04:24quarter for us we already see that and I'm sure we'll do better than last year first half of next

04:31year looks very good too.