Gulf Air announces Dhaka

Gulf Air has officially announced that it will be reinstating services into DAC-Dhaka, Bangladesh, effective 30MAY16 after a 3 year hiatus that was initiated due to Bahrain Govt directive to curtail losses by any means necessary. 

Routes such as DAC, KTM and CMB were part of that drive in 2013 and now it is being relaunched with 5 weekly nonstop flights using a split schedule which is as follows:

Aircraft: A320 for all 5 weekly flights
Days: 1/3

GF 248 Dep BAH 0100 Arr DAC 0930
GF 249 Dep DAC 1030 Arr DAC 1325

Days: 2/4/6

GF 250 Dep BAH 2010 Arr DAC 0440+1
GF 251 Dep DAC 0540 Arr BAH 0835

Comments:

This is a good move by GF as it is relaunching DAC in a low risk manner by operating 5 times per week using an A320 which will provide good network support as well as decent O&D yield bound to BAH and DMM in particular. However, the above mentioned split schedule is ok for the summer season but cannot be operated in Winter due to the dense fog in DAC + the A320 will face major payload restrictions out of DAC to BAH between NOV-MAR.

For the IATA W16 season, it is best to operate it as follows:

Days: 1/2/3/4/6
GF 250 Dep BAH 1030 Arr DAC 1900
GF 251 Dep DAC 2000 Arr BAH 2255

In this way, the flight operations will not be effected one bit due to fog which will be beneficial to the overall OTP performance of the carrier + it enables GF to operate a standardized schedule which in itself is a sales generating tool and also more comforting for travel agents and passengers to comprehend. Another important aspect with the above proposal is that it helps connect with GF 006 LHR-BAH which has historically struggled due to the lack of Indian subcontinent destinations it has good connections with which provide volume traffic in turn. The above mentioned schedule proposal also connects all of the prime GCC markets conveniently in both directions thus providing more network benefit potential.