Airlines
Gulf Air To Stay True to Itself While Challenging Big Three
Strategic plan foresees fleet of 50 aircraft in 2023
Gulf Air expects to take delivery of five Boeing 787-9s this year.
Gulf Air expects to take delivery of five Boeing 787-9s this year.

The new passenger terminal building at Bahrain International Airport, scheduled to open next year and expected to increase the gateway’s annual capacity to 14 million passengers from the current nine million, will support Gulf Air’s ambition to hold its own and compete with its much larger rivals in the Middle East, its chief executive said. “It will be the fastest connecting airport in the region,” the Bahrain national carrier’s CEO, Krešimir Kučko, told AIN on the sidelines of the ACI Europe & World general assembly while acknowledging traffic in the Middle East remains dominated by Dubai’s Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways. “It’s not just the super-connectors we ’re competing with, [it is] also low-cost carriers and other airlines from around the globe,” he explained. “In light of that, we undertook a 360-degree strategic review and developed a new corporate strategy.”