Gulf Air

Gulf Air has revealed on the GDS systems that it will be increasing its flights to Bangkok from July onwards to 13 times a week nonstop. Currently, flights are flown 11 times a week nonstop. The breakdown of aircraft used for the 13 weekly flights are 3 weekly A 332s + 10 weekly A 343s. According to Flight Global's website, GF is too examining the possibility of using these B 77Ws to launch a new service nonstop from Bahrain to an American east coast city.

Analysis:

The only East Coast city worthy of a GF flight is ORD due to the strong relationship that GF has with AA which has a mega hub at ORD thus providing useful onwards feeder traffic via a code share. ORD too for the time being sees no flights on offer from EY/EK/QR/KU hence an ideal opportunity for GF to exploit if it is serious on flying to USA this year. GF would need to use 2 B 77Ws for a daily BAH-ORD-BAH service so if they get 4 from 9W, the other 2 can be used for daily LHR (GF 007 / GF 002) + daily BKK bound nonstop flights.

If ORD is too be launched, the best flight timings suited for a nonstop operation are as follows:

GF XXX Dep BAH 0945 Arr ORD 1800

GF XXX Dep ORD 2030 Arr BAH 1830+1

With these flight timings, every single GCC + Indian subcontinent destination (except KTM) that GF flies to connects beautifully with this flight in both directions via BAH. Also to/from ORD, major cities with UA or AA connect too such as ORF, LAX, SFO, IAH, DFW, SEA, DTW, EWR, IAD, DCA and MIA.