Jazeera Airways cuts routes to lower costs

Kuwaiti low-cost carrier Jazeera Airways said on Wednesday it was cutting services on certain routes to weather difficult times with no improvement in sight next year. The airline, which flies to 23 destinations, said it would stop flying regularly from Kuwait to the Egyptian Red Sea city of Hurghada, cancel its Mumbai route and delay earlier plans to fly to Latakia, Syria.
The carrier was also reviewing whether to halt flights from Kuwait City to Tehran and its route between Dubai and Bahrain, it said in a statement. Chief Executive Stefan Pichler said there would be no job cuts but declined to say whether the company would post a profit this year as earlier planned.
It made a loss of 1.47 million dinars ($5.2 million) in the first nine months. He said Jazeera, which competes with United Arab Emirates-based carriers Air Arabia and flydubai, was still planning to set up a second hub outside the Gulf and hoped to make a decision in the first half of 2010.