Royal Jordanian Airlines will start a series of new routes into Africa in the next few months in a bid to replace haemorrhaging European traffic, the carrier's chief executive Hussein Dabbas told Flightglobal's Airline Business Daily at the World Route Development Forum in Berlin.
"We are looking at different markets to feed Royal Jordanian," he said.
The carrier will begin a service to Lagos, Nigeria, at the end of November with Airbus A330-200s, as well as another to Algerian capital Algiers.
In the first quarter of 2012, Royal Jordanian aims to launch a route to Nairobi in Kenya, said Dabbas.
Routes to Ethiopia's Addis Ababa and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania are also being studied.
Royal Jordanian is looking to these new African links to plug an 80% fall in European tourism traffic to the country this year.
"North American and European tourism has dried up because of the Arab Spring," said Dabbas.
"The tourism sector in Jordan is in crisis mode," he added, despite Jordan itself being known as a stable country without any of the problems of its neighbours.
Although traffic across the network has risen so far this year by 4% and revenues are up 5%, the carrier's costs have soared by 20%, while yields have dropped, said Dabbas.
"Whatever we're doing, it's as if we are on a treadmill - we're not getting anywhere," he added.
The Arab Spring has also meant other traditionally good markets for the carrier have been hit, said Dabbas.
Its routes to Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, which make up part of its so-called Levant strategy to connect secondary markets around the region away from the gaze of the big Gulf players, have all suffered.
"The entire strategy for the Levant is under pressure. We believe in the strategy but we have to take some actions to bridge [the traffic falls]," said Dabbas.
The carrier will only look at axing routes as a "last option" and prefers to down gauge aircraft types and reduce frequencies instead, he said.
Rising costs and falling yields mean Dabbas expects the carrier to show a full-year loss for 2011. It lost JD39.2 million ($55.2 million) in the first six months of this year.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
