In recent times, we’ve seen Oman Air embark on a transformation plan, in hopes of achieving profitability. The government owned airline has historically lost money — I had always assumed that profitability wasn’t the goal, because the airline was just extremely inefficient.
Continue reading: Oman Air Connect: New All-Economy 737 Operation
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Oman Air is now essentially the size of Gulf Air and is seemingly going down the same historical path: who here remembers Gulf Traveller, GF's all-economy 767 operation out of Abu Dhabi?
I have lots of fond memories of both Oman Air and Gulf Air but the truth is that they are no longer relevant except in their own home markets...
Last year, my wife and I took four different flights on Oman Air within a span of three weeks, traveling between Oman, India, and Saudi Arabia. What stood out the most? The inflight meal—because it was exactly the same on all four flights.
The only options were pasta for vegetarians and chicken with rice for non-vegetarians. No variations, no regional touches—just the same meal, every time. I’ve flown with many ME airlines, and this was the first time I noticed a full-service carrier cutting back on meal diversity to this extent. It felt a bit odd for an airline that positions itself as a premium carrier.
Me! I grew up in Oman watching the blue liveries of Gulf Traveller 767s fly above our house. Oh the memories...
787 MAX - that would be a firm "no" - with the latest issue reported that following a bird strike causing a fan blade break, the pilots can become incapacitated by toxic smoke in under one minute.
"providing our guests with more flexibility and choice without compromising on quality.”
As they take away the choice of business class, leaving no choice at all
This! Just a few years after Gulf Air received state-of-art A330-200s which were superior to Emirates back then (in terms of hard product), they went on low cost mode with the introduction of boring Gulf Traveller with no IFEs. Hope Oman Air doesn’t follow the same way.
Their A330s are alive and well and flying for QR between Colombo and Doha, among other routes.
Why not let Salam Air operate all this low yield routes and feed it into Oman Air network. They could have just make things work with the current resources. Follow the same concept as Emirates/flydubai. Have a proper integration in which Oman Air focus on high yield routes and Salam Air on the low yield high density economy markets.
I got a superb Business Class bargain between CDG and BKK a couple of years ago and I would pick BAH over DOH any time.
Will be perfect for travellers from the Indian subcontinent, more specifically Bangladesh as people here don't fly biz and also don't like LCC due to no food and low baggage allowance. EK, SV and BG economy are always at around 85% in their 777 flighs to DAC. Oman Air can once again restart CGP flights as well as increase capacity to DAC