Sunday, March 23, 2008

Where did the traffic go?

According to an article published by Times of Oman, passenger traffic at Muscat International Airport saw a sharp decline towards the end of Feb-08 compared to the same period last year...

According to the article, "traffic fell by 23.9 per cent to 617,791 at the end of February 2008 against 812,600 passengers during the corresponding period in 2007,

The number of arriving passengers fell by 20.8 per cent...

The number of departing passengers via Muscat International Airport fell by 24.1 per cent "

Click here to read the full text.

The reasons cited by the article include withdrawal of Gulf Air and some airlines ceasing service to MCT.

7 comments:

Abdullah Al-Bahrani said...

do you know what has happend to Ticket prices? I find it hard to believe that passangers are so sensitive to what airline they travel on.
Whatever it is, that is a drastic decline!

Twister said...

ticket prices for PIA certainly have gone up because they have a near-monopoly over the Muscat-Lahore and Muscat-Islamabad routes...(dont know too much about others though)

Ali said...

soon we just gonna have to drive to Dubai and fly from there

Florian Vermin said...

The problem is that Gulf Air has withdrawn nearly all its services to Muscat expect Bahrain-Muscat. On most of the routes, their is simply no competition anymore. Maybe Oman needs a new private carrier to make Muscat International more attractive for passengers.

ColOman said...

that makes sense, All flgihts from Gulf Air heading to another country have stopped so less people will come to Oman.....

Now it Oman Air's job to pick up the numbers

muscati said...

Oman didn't withdraw from Gulf Air till around April or May last year and then Gulf Air switched their hub from Oman. If these statistics are like for like comparisons then the drop in the number of passengers can't due to Gulf Air's withdrawal. Gulf Air was still using Muscat as a hub in the corresponding period.

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