Hello everyone, my name is Fawaz and I am responsible for marketing communication at Jazeera Airways, in addition to being an amateur blogger of course. We have been reading your questions about Jazeera Airways on this blog over the past few months. Questions that ranged from “how can we afford fares as low as KD 5?” To questions about our brand name. In an effort to answer all your questions, we recently asked Mark to gather questions you had for Jazeera Airways and in return we promised him that we would answer all of them, exclusively on this blog. Lets start

Mark: How can you afford to offer super low fares?

This is a great question that I will answer in two parts. First, we prefer to fly our planes full of travelers paying less per seat rather than flying with less travelers paying more. Other airlines prefer high fares and less passengers, which does not make sense to us. Why would they want to impact less people? For us, we enjoy flying people and being part of their lives.

The second part involves our business model that works to achieve high efficency and a lower operational cost base. In other words, we do more with less. We achieve our high efficiency by employing

1. state of the art technology to streamline processes
2. hardworking, multitasking, highly motivated team

In sum, we can afford super low fares because our business model is based on volume more than yield, and because we depend on leading technologies and great team to lower our cost.

Follow-up: How are you able to lower your cost?

We are able to maintain a lower cost base and high level of quality and safety through three main ways:

1- Recruitment- We recruit highly motivated and committed team members. This is crucial as it has direct impact on day-to-day cost. Being able to wear different ‘hats’ (so to speak) and do the work of several people is a quality we seek in and build in our team members. That’s why we call our people our ‘high flyers’.

2- Aircraft utilization - Aircraft on the ground do not make money, so we keep our aircraft in the air where they do make money. We achieve this through quick turn-arounds at the gate. Our planes arrive at a destination, wait for our travelers to disembark, board return travelers, and fly back to base ready to take off again in less than 45 minutes.

3- A fleet of single-type fleet: the Airbus A320.

If you had Porsche and a Ferrari and Lamborghini in your drive way, you would need three different specialized garages to service them with three different mechanics and three different spare parts inventories. On the other hand, if you had three Porsches you would only need to contract a single garage to service all three and your maintenance costs would be much lower. Aircraft are the same, though much more sophisticated. Allow me to elaborate.

If an airline had an A320, an A310, an A340, and a 777, they would need certified captains, first officers, cabin crew for each type of aircraft. In this case, if a 777 pilot falls sick with the flu, an A320 pilot cannot just jump in the captain’s seat of a 777 unless she is trained on a 777. Because of this, airlines with multiple aircraft types in their fleet need to have more pilots to cover scenarios like this, more engineers who do nothing but wait for someone to get sick, and spare parts inventories to cover all types. This creates redundancies and inneficiency.

In our case, we have an all-A320 fleet. We do not need to hire more crew since any of our crew can jump in any of our aircraft and take-off and any of our engineers is licensed to work on any of our aircraft, and our spare parts inventory covers all our aircraft.

4- Investment in Technology – By investing heavily into technology, we were able to raise efficiency, reduce operational cost and drive the price of tickets down even further. We currently employ over a dozen world class technology systems and tools that range from the booking systems we use to satellite aircraft monitoring that tells us the status and integrity of each aircraft while it is in the air no matter where it is on earth, and automatically dispatches support teams and parts to the destination airport if the situation required. These are only some of the benefits of having world class Lufthansa Technik engineers and technology working with us and for us.

Mark: Does Jazeera Airways have any plans of expanding their flights to Europe and North America?

A low cost base coupled with high efficiency is the key to the success of Jazeera Airways. Short haul flights have a lower cost and yield higher productivity rates by our crew. Aircraft crew hours (pilots and cabin crew) are regulated by civil aviation authorities’ laws. These laws ensure airline crews are not over-worked by airlines and in return risk the safety of the travelers. Of course we fully support and comply with these standards and have our own standards that compliment them as well.

Therefore, with longer flights we have to change crews at destinations, which mean we need to have crews stationed there. All these are costs that impact the price of your ticket.

So when will we start flights to Europe and North America? We will when we arrive at a financial model that enables us to offer super low fares to cities in those regions, just like we did with the Middle East, Iran, and the Indian Subcontinent. In the end, Jazeera Airways is here to bring freedom to travelers through lower fares, independent booking payment, and simplicity. Our focus at the moment is our home region.

FOFO: why its not allowed now to book a ticket to Amman in February whereby other destinations are possible?

Fofo, you probably tried to book before we released our winter schedule to Amman.

CyberRowdy: why do you charge 1 KD for credit card orders?

Jazeera Airways is 100% for transparent charges. We charge KD 1 for credit bookings because you are using a credit card to pay for your booking. The alternative would be to hide that charge within the ticket and charge everyone that fee, including travelers who paid cash or through K-Net. We think that is unfair, don’t you?

Our commitment to transparency does not only apply to booking fees. As you probably know neither food on board nor extra weight is included in our fares. That is also because of our belief that our travelers should only pay for what they use. When you fly on other airlines you will be charged for everything up front. So what happens if you decide not eat on board? Do they refund you the price of the meal? No they don’t. And when do decide to eat or drink, do you know what are you paying for? Is it One Coke or ten Cokes?

The fact of the matter is you do not and you will always end up paying more, even if you do not want to eat! In fact, it is just like going to a restaurant and with a group of friends and everyone orders except for you because you are not hungry. Then when you ask for the cheque the restaurant charges YOU for a full course meal! Wouldn’t you think that is unfair also? We do.

CyberRowdy: When I select the fly from and fly to, the site should only show the dates on which you have flights to that destinations…you may check airarabia’s site.

Our website shows the date you entered plus the closest flight before your date and the closest flight after your date. This is actually a feature we intended to have because it shows you the fares of dates that are close to the entered dates. Now, if you saw that you would be saving money by flying a day earlier, and you weren’t particular about your date, wouldn’t you be glad we had that feature? I know I would.

A380 Maniac: can we look forward to low cost flights to the holy cities- Mecca and Medina as well?

Yes and more destinations as well. We launched 13 destinations in less than 10 months and with our fifth brand new aircraft joining our fleet in January, we will continue to widen our network.

Zaydoun: My only issue is with their name.

We are very proud of who we are, what we have achieved, and our brand name. We called the airline ‘Jazeera’ for the word’s unmistaken identity to the Arabian Peninsula. Jazeera, which is the Arabic reference for the Arabian Peninsula, represents our history, culture, and passion for life. That is what characterizes people of our region, and that’s who we are.

Having said that, Jazeera means a lot more to us. It serves as constant reminder of our Big Goal: to be the leading airline of the Arabian Peninsula for the Arabian Peninsula. It is also a reminder of our mission to free all travelers residing in the Arabian Peninsula from the hold of conventional airlines, which want you to depend on third parties when you book, accept all inclusive fares so you don’t question the pricing strategies, and pay high fares without any right to question them.

With Jazeera Airways you get to see all our fares online, you get to only pay for what you want , and you are enabled to book and pay at your own time without depending on a third parties and their office hours. We are all about empowering our travelers to be more independent.

That was the last of the questions posted on 248am.com. We hope we answered your questions to the detail you expected. Should you have any additional question please dont hesitate to email me directly on fawaz.alsirri@jazeeraairways.com. In the mean time, enjoy the rest of Ramadan and I look forward to seeing you on board!