Oman Air Connect: New All-Economy 737 Operation

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.

However, in 2024, a new CEO was appointed at the airline, who seems serious about making changes. Along those lines, Oman Air has announced an interesting development, which people will probably have conflicting feelings about.

Oman Air launching an all-economy subfleet

Oman Air will be launching Oman Air Connect, whereby the airline will begin flying select aircraft in an all-economy configuration. The current plan is for five Boeing 737 MAX 8s to feature this new configuration. The first plane arrived in early February 2025, and the other planes are expected to join the fleet in the coming months.

The new aircraft will primarily operate to the Indian Subcontinent, Middle East, and Africa, complementing the Muscat-based carrier’s existing network. Exact details of what service will be like on these planes remains to be seen, though the company promises “more affordable travel options while maintaining the airline’s renowned comfort and service.”

Here’s how Oman Air CEO Con Korfiatis describes this:

“The way people travel has evolved, with greater accessibility and choice; at the same time, passengers still want to enjoy a comfortable journey. With this all-Economy fleet, we are adapting to these changing needs, providing our guests with more flexibility and choice without compromising on quality.”

As of now, there are more questions than answers:

• Is this also a play to get cheaper labor, with the airline hiring separate crews to work these flights? Or will they be staffed by existing Oman Air crews?
• Will the inflight service be the same as it would be in economy on a mainline flight, or will service also be scaled back?
• How many seats will Oman Air fit onto these Boeing 737 MAX 8s? For what it’s worth, Oman Air’s current Boeing 737 MAX 8s have 162 seats, with 12 of those being in business class
• Will Oman Air Connect exclusively add capacity to existing markets, or replace frequencies of other Oman Air aircraft in some markets?
• With Oman Air joining oneworld, will Oman Air Connect be integrated as well, or separate from that arrangement?

My take on Oman Air’s all-economy operation

I commend Oman Air’s new CEO for making some tough decisions to try and turn around the airline. Admittedly there are some markets where there’s a lot of economy demand and not much premium demand, and I can see how it’s potentially more profitable to have higher capacity aircraft. Now, we still don’t know to what extent pricing and services will differ on these planes for economy passengers, and I think it’ll be interesting to see that.

But here’s my issue with this concept, in general. We’ve seen Oman Air shrink quite a bit in its bid to become profitable, including retiring all Airbus A330s. At this point, the carrier’s fleet consists of 33 aircraft, including 23 Boeing 737s (737-800s, 737 MAX 8s, and 737-900ERs) and 10 Boeing 787s (787-8s and 787-9s).

Now Oman Air has essentially allocated all of its remaining 737 MAX 8 deliveries to this new Oman Air Connect concept.

I’m just kind of skeptical of the concept of not furthering the strategy of the core airline brand, and instead focusing on a subfleet like this. If you’re a Gulf carrier that’s heavily reliant on connecting traffic, it’s important to be able to efficiently scale your network, and offer lots of connectivity.

Now, I suppose in some ways, Oman Air Connect is contributing to that, at least in economy. But if Oman Air is at all going after premium demand, you’d at least want a premium cabin available on all connecting flights as well. After all, if you’re booking a premium ticket, you’re going to avoid Oman Air if you’re put in economy for one of those segments.

It just seems to me that if you were to set up an all-economy configuration, maybe you’d want to do that with the older 737s that might otherwise be retired, rather than allocating brand new 737 MAXs to this operation, especially when growth is otherwise so limited.

Anyway, we’ll see how this all works out, but this initiative further limits Oman Air’s growth as a full service carrier. Then again, with Oman Air’s CEO having a background running a low cost carrier, I’m also not surprised to see him leading the airline in this direction.

Bottom line

Oman Air is setting up a new low cost operation, known as Oman Air Connect. With this, the airline will have a fleet of five Boeing 737 MAX 8s in an all-economy configuration, operating routes with limited premium demand.

While I can of course appreciate the desire to match aircraft to demand patterns, it also seems to me like Oman Air should focus on efficiently growing its core business. With the airline having retired so many planes, its network is smaller than in the past. We’ll see how this works out, and I look forward to seeing what kind of a product Oman Air will offer on these all-economy aircraft.

What do you make of the Oman Air Connect concept?