Jetrader - November/December 2010 - 8

Q&A

Hussein Dabbas
President and CEO
Royal Jordanian Airlines
Interview conducted by Marco Sterk, The Longbow Group, LLC

Jetrader: What is your general ﬂeet strategy for the next ﬁve to 10 years?
Hussein Dabbas: Our strategy is based on three ﬂeet types: regional jets, medium-range ﬂeet and long-haul ﬂeet. The regional jets that we have right now and will continue to have are the Embraers—the E-175 and E-195. These planes are used in the radius from two to two-and-a-half hours from Amman. We are using them primarily because we are able to do multi-daily frequencies to many of the destinations. We developed the strategy several years ago when basically if you wanted to travel from Amman to Riyadh, it was on Thursdays and Sundays. So in order for us to be able to serve the kind of short-haul ﬂights of an hour or hour and a half, we believed that putting a big airplane on such a route that was not a very thick route, would mean that you don’t really get the seat factor that you want. So, getting the smaller airplanes enabled us to have a daily or multi-daily or three daily ﬂights to many of the destinations that we have. We were able to do that to many of the regional destinations around Amman. Beyond that two and half hours, we decided that the best one would be the Airbus 320 family. That is why we have A319s, A320s and A321s, which we use from Paris all the way to Mumbai. This ﬂeet is able to help us capture a big part of the four-to-ﬁve hour ﬂights into Amman and then connect them on the shorter haul Embraers. Now if we look at the long-haul ﬂights, presently we have the A310s, A330s and the A340s, with the A340s basically dedicated to North America, the A330s dedicated to the Far East, and the A310s to the Indian subcontinent. We will start replacing those airplanes when we start receiving the Boeing 787, which is scheduled in the last quarter of 2013. We were supposed to be receiving them in the last quarter of 2010, but history indicates that these planes were delayed past that time. When we start receiving the 787s, the ﬁrst planes to leave will be the A310s, followed by the A340s and the A330s. We have 11 787s coming in, and those will be the main core of our long-haul, widebody ﬂeet. The A320 family will be the medium haul and the Embraers will be the short regional jets.

JT: You also have a couple A310 freighters. Are you looking at plans to replace those or considering the 777 or A330 freighters?
HD: With the 787s coming in and the large capacity it has, and since we’ll be using those in the North Atlantic and the Far East—which is a major cargo origin destination market—I think we might not maintain the widebody freighters and basically opt for a narrowbody. Whether it is a A320 freighter or A321 or maybe a 737 freighter, you would bring in the cargo on the widebody and then disperse it on the narrowbody for the region itself. We are not in the business of carrying cargo from Bangkok to London or New York to Delhi. This is too thin of a route and the rates are not very good. So we want to bring everything into the region and then from the region we disperse it to the countries around Jordan, which we believe is much better than carrying it from long haul to long haul.

JT: How are you dealing with the increased competition from the different Emirates airlines?
HD: Well, that’s a tough question. We’ve been asked this question several times. The very aggressive and very rich airlines that are available in the Gulf are doing a superb job in terms of the product, in terms of expansion, in terms of frequency and so on. It’s quite challenging for us to be able to compete with them. Going west of Amman, they don’t compete with us whatsoever. 8 The ofﬁcial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading
Credit: ©Airbus SAS

Jetrader - November/December 2010

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