Muscat: Oman Air, the Sultanate’s national carrier, has skilfully overcome the grounding of its 737 MAX planes by reducing the capacity on some routes and redeploying on other destinations.

This was achieved by “network planning,” said Laurent Recoura, Vice-President of Oman Air.

The Oman Air senior executive added that there would be no halt in service to any current destination, despite the Boeing Max issue.

Speaking to Times of Oman, the Vice-President of Oman Air, international sales, said: “We don’t want to shut down any destination. We didn’t stop any destination – we just reduced capacity on some of our destinations – just like many other airlines – following the MAX ban.

“It’s a network planning job to support new destinations, and doing that is tricky since you need to accommodate all flights. That’s why we are reducing some frequency here and there, as all airlines are doing. All airlines are affected by the MAX ban, but it is the skills of network planning to reduce the impact on existing routes. We don’t want to shut down any destinations,” he said.

The Oman Air executive added that 2019 has already witnessed the launch of flights to Alexandria and Athens and that now is the time to cap the fleet. “We will make all of these routes sustainable as we were growing aggressively for the past two years. Now it is time to stabilise and absorb the capacity and make it sustainable.

“The fleet is capped at 55 – that’s the plan we are executing right now. No new destinations are planned for 2020 – but studies are going on in some sectors,” he said.

“We are planning the cap the capacity to make it sustainable. When you are growing by 20 per cent over the past two years you don’t want to do it too many times because by doing that you are putting your financial stability at risk. Now is the time to make it sustainable. That’s the clear vision from the CEO that we are executing,” he added.
 

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