According to CEO Barathan Pasupathi, the new routes will expand the airline’s network, apart from facilitating travel to and from Kuwait. Flyers will be transported safely by bus between Saudi Arabia’s Qaisumah Airport and Kuwait.

In response to the current geopolitical situation, Jazeera Airways’ flights will also provide access to international destinations through nearby hubs such as Dubai International Airport and Zayed International Airport, supporting essential and business travel.

In fact, the opening of the routes has been implemented under the carrier’s “Operation Barakah,” Jazeera Airways, as Kuwait faces the challenge of maintaining connectivity with the wider Gulf region and the rest of the world, as the Iran conflict has severely disrupted aviation activities across the Gulf, with airports even resorting to temporary suspension of flights.

During a meeting with staffers at Jazeera Airways’ Kuwait headquarters, Barathan Pasupathi termed the current situation “unprecedented,” adding that it has forced the airline to operate under “extraordinary circumstances.” Despite this, Jazeera Airways has emerged as the only airline maintaining operational connectivity linked to Kuwait.

“As a Kuwaiti airline, our role is clear at this stage. We will continue to serve Kuwait to the best of our ability, bringing back Kuwaitis and residents stranded abroad while enabling travellers with urgent or essential needs to continue their journeys,” CEO Barathan Pasupathi said.

Under “Operation Barakah,” flights are currently operating through Saudi Arabia’s Al Qaisumah Airport, thanks to the close cooperation between the airline and the authorities in both the Gulf countries.

While noting the Kuwaiti community’s active role in supporting the airline’s growth for over two decades, Barathan Pasupathi termed “Operation Barakah” as the carrier’s duty to give back by helping maintain the Gulf nation’s global connectivity.

In the coming weeks, Jazeera Airways will further expand “Operation Barakah,” while preparing for the full resumption of normal services from Kuwait once conditions allow. The initiative also posed a logistical challenge for the carrier, as it had to redeploy more than 300 employees and nearly 10 aircraft, apart from transporting equipment, supplies, and spare parts by road to support the airline’s temporary base of operations.

Hailing his company, CEO Barathan Pasupathi said the scale of the operation further highlighted the resilience and dedication of the airline’s workforce when it comes to maintaining Kuwait’s link with global destinations during a difficult period.

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Their products fall into a variety of industries, including jewellery, cosmetics, clothing, cuisine, beverages, fashion, and technology. The company was established in 1983, and it has its main office in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. DDF is a government-owned Investment Corporation, and it comes under Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum who is the head of the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority.

DDF was established in December 1983 and had sales of USD 20 million in its first year. DDF sales increased from USD 44,000 on the first day of trading in December 1983 to USD 32 million in 1986. Arrivals Duty-Free opened to the public in 1987 and was making about USD 200,000 per day.

In 1989, Dubai Duty Free launched its ‘Finest Surprise’ promotion, a raffle for 1,000 tickets to win a high-end vehicle. In 1990, there were approximately Five million passengers at the airport, which contributed to USD 95 million worth of revenue, although operations were severely hampered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Since then, the company has developed into one of the largest travel retail operators in the world, with USD 2.02 billion in sales in 2019.

With the opening of the Sheikh Rashid terminal at Dubai International Airport in 2000, the number of employees at the different Dubai Duty Free sites throughout the airport increased to 900, along with a 5,400 M2 increase in floor area. The turnover of the company in 2003 reached USD 380 million, and around 17,000 M2 of additional shop space was added with the opening of Terminal 3 and Concourses 2 and 3 at Dubai International.

Dubai Duty Free has experienced tremendous growth and development over the years and has been dubbed the world’s largest airport shop in terms of revenue. The entire Dubai International Airport’s 38,000 square metres of retail area are occupied by retail activity. Over 6,100 employees from 47 different countries work at the Dubai Duty Free, including 25 of the original 100 employees hired in 1983. It anticipates business to exceed USD 3 billion annually by 2025 and to employ between 9,000 and 10,000 people.

The brain behind this successful venture is 80-year-old Colm McLoughlin, an Irish businessman, and the executive vice chairman and CEO of the company.

Who is Colm McLoughlin?
• Colm McLoughlin was born in July 1943, in Ballinasloe, County Galway, Ireland and happens to be the brother of Ray McLoughlin, former Ireland international rugby player
• In 1960, he went to London to study dentistry, but he began working in retail
• Colm McLoughlin worked for Woolworths, an Australian multinational retail and finance company and soon became one of the youngest managers in the company
• In 1969, he joined Shannon Airport Duty Free, and went on to become general manager of the duty-free operation
• In 1983, at the request of the Government of Dubai, Colm McLoughlin joined Dubai Duty Free at Dubai International Airport
• He was the first non-UAE national at the time to receive the ‘Most Distinguished Employee Award’ from the ‘Dubai Government Excellence Awards’ in 2000
• In 2004, Colm McLoughlin was honoured with the ‘Frontier Lifetime Achievement Award’ which was presented by Frontier magazine, making him only the second person after Brendan O’Regan
• He was also named one of the ‘50 Most Influential Expats’ in the UAE, in a list released by Forbes Middle East Magazine in 2016
• In 2019, Colm McLoughlin celebrated 50 years in the duty free industry
• According to Arabian Business, Colm McLoughlin’s net worth is around USD 1.85 billion, as of January 2023

‘DDF set up was based on Shannon Duty Free’

On July 15, 1983, the day before his 40th birthday, Colm arrived in Dubai. He travelled to Dubai on a six-month contract to establish duty free operations along with two other Irish industry professionals, George Horan and John Sutcliffe.

Sutcliffe, one of the three, departed DDF in the 1990s to work in Bahrain for Aer Rianta, while Horan quit DDF in June 2016. As we all know, Colm continues to lead DDF activities with great success.

In an interview with Gulf News, he recalled how he lost his luggage when he first came to Dubai back then.

“My luggage did not arrive when I landed in Dubai. I flew from Dublin to London and took another flight from London to Dubai. There were no direct flights from Dublin in those days,” Colm McLoughlin explained.

“The first thing I had to do was shop for clothes. So I headed to Al Ghurair Mall. The mall was closed between 1 pm and 4 pm, which I was not aware of. So I waited outside the mall for two hours and the heat took me by surprise. Even when I stepped onto the balcony of my hotel room without footwear, it was as if my feet would burn. We were right in the middle of the summer,” he said.

He also asserted how from a small team he built an empire.

“Our team arrived in July and on December 20, DDF launched its operations. We were a small team of ten people. Today, DDF employs more than 2,600 people. The operation has consistently raised the benchmark for airport retail and it continues to grow. We could not have achieved this without the dedicated team we have on board,” Colm McLoughlin added.

“DDF was set up based on Shannon Duty Free operations at the Shannon Airport located in County Clare, Ireland. We started work based on what we knew from the operations at Shannon Airport. Soon we started sourcing our suppliers and agents. All along, we kept asking ourselves what would and could be different here,” he noted.

He concluded by saying that the UAE has a dynamic economy, which is diversifying over a period of time.

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According to aviation consultancy OAG, the hub, which has consistently outperformed its international competitors, including London Heathrow, logged 4.2 million seats in February 2023.

Although Dubai International Airport has the highest monthly capacity in the world, the latest figures are down by 9% from the previous month.

With 3.3 million seats and a 7% drop from the prior month, London Heathrow, a solid rival to Dubai International Airport, placed second overall. The third-place went to Istanbul Airport, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Singapore’s Changi.

The most recent monthly rankings from OAG are based on February’s scheduled airline capacity.

The consulting company also compared the most recent data to the same month in 2019, before the global pandemic COVID-19 began.

Dubai International Airport recently reported carrying over 66 million passengers overall in 2022, an increase of 127% from 2021. The airport anticipates a rise in traffic, with 78 million passengers passing through in total by 2023.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), relaxing COVID-19 regulations helped the aviation sector grow in 2017. Compared to 2021, international traffic increased by 152.7% in 2022, surpassing pre-COVID levels by 62.2%.

The average waiting time at Dubai International Airport departure passport control was less than five minutes for over 96% of passengers in 2022, the airport’s operator announced recently.

For arrivals, the average waiting time at passport control queues was less than 13 minutes for over 95% of flyers.

These figures are usually based on average queuing times (weighted by the total number of passengers processed) captured by Dubai Airports’ real-time monitoring system.

Dubai International Airport also mentioned how its ‘Smart Gates’ were speeding customers through the immigration process.

The airport rolled out the feature in 2021, thus enabling flyers to travel without using their identification papers.

Utilising a mix of facial and iris recognition, passengers can check in for their flights and complete immigration formalities sans identification documents. Their faces serve as ‘passports.’

The aviation hub’s baggage handling system processed a total of 62.2 million bags in 2022.

“With a success rate of 99.8%, this translates into 2.2 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers, an impressive performance for the world’s busiest international hub. In terms of baggage delivery on arrival, 92% of all baggage was delivered within 45 minutes to our customers. The baggage volume in 2022 represents 86.2% of the 2019 baggage volume at DXB,” Dubai International Airport stated.

The baggage delivery performance measures the time from the moment the aircraft comes to a halt on the bay to the time the bags are delivered to the reclaim carousel.

According to OAG, capacity decreased in February 2023 compared to January at every significant airport that made it into its top 10 rankings.

The three aviation hubs that have seen the most significant drops in traffic are Istanbul, Doha, and Bangkok, each of which saw a 10% drop in passengers.

However, some Asian airports have experienced increased passenger volume, with Changi in Singapore, Incheon in Korea, and Suvarnabhumi in Bangkok making OAG’s top 10.

Changi advanced from position 11 to position 4, Incheon advanced from position 45 to position 7, and Suvarnabhumi advanced from position 46 to place 10.

London Heathrow remains the top hub in the European market, followed by Istanbul with 3.2 million seats.

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The northern runway at Dubai International Airport will be closed for 45 days between May 9 and June 22. During this time, the overall refurbishment will be carried out to ensure safety as well as the standard operations.

As per Dubai Airport’s chief executive Paul Griffiths, the runway refurbishment was shifted after the Eid rush and before the summer holidays. Talking to Khaleej Times he said, “It’s been timed very carefully be after the Eid break and before the busy summer period. So, we chose the time in the calendar very carefully during a period where the traffic numbers are slightly lower than other times of the year.”

Griffiths further said, “DWC, fortunately, is close to quite a large percentage of the population in Dubai. And the convenience of that airport, I’m sure, will mean that it’s not going to be a great inconvenience for passengers to get to and from the city, their place of work, or where they live.”

He further added, “So, during that period, all we need is for customers to check with their airlines to make sure they understand which airports they’re getting to be departing or arriving at.”

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The numbers show a decrease of 19.8 percent compared to the previous year. Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths, said in a statement, “The Covid-19 pandemic is of a very different nature than any previous crisis in that it has affected supply, demand and health security and by extension, the entire global economy. We’re dealing with a monster here for which we clearly have to find a solution. Until there is a proven level of confidence medically that people can travel without fear of spreading or contracting the virus, the situation we find ourselves in is likely to continue.”

Recently, the UAE airlines Emirates and Etihad announced the resumption of flight cancellations to select destinations as countries are slowly easing their respective lockdowns. According to Brian Pearce, chief economist of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), “Critically, we need to see [first] a reduction in COVID-19 risks, the risk of countries importing COVID-19. And so, we either need to have a vaccine, reliable tests, or the widespread acceptance of layered measures that IATA and others are proposing [before we can see a recovery].”

IATA data pointed out that aviation and tourism account for 13 percent of the UAE’s GDP. It seems that aircraft movements dropped 18.7 percent year-on-year from 95,857 to 77,920 in the beginning of February, media reports said.

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According to reports, the Dubai airport passenger traffic reached 41.3 million passengers in the first half of 2019 amid the runway closure.

The airport had shut down its southern runway for the purpose of rehabilitation from April 16 to May 30. Dubai airport’s runway closure led to a reduction of its runway capacity by half its normal size and led to a reduction in the passenger flights by 32 percent.  The number of flights into the airport dropped by 11.6 percent to 178,383 while the cargo volume fell by 18.3 percent to 1.04 million.

“A significant portion of the cargo traffic at Dubai International is belly-hold which was impacted by the Southern runway rehabilitation programme,” Dubai Airports said in a statement.

India retained the position of being the most popular destination for Dubai travellers, with traffic for the first half of 2019 reaching 5.7 million. Delhi and Mumbai were the most popular cities in India. Saudi Arabia follows to be second with 3.1 million travellers, followed by United Kingdom with 2.8 million.

Most of the flights from Dubai airport were redirected to Dubai World Central, an international airport situated in Jebel Ali. The redirecting of flights caused an increase in the passenger traffic in DWC to almost double its usual traffic.  DWC had reported passenger traffic of 517,813 in the first half of 2018, which doubled to 1.2 million over the same period in 2019.

The introduction of smart gates in the Dubai international airport has reportedly reduced the waiting time by 25 percent in the first half of 2019.

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