Low cost carrier Air Arabia to begin flights to Kabul

Sharjah-based low-cost airline Air Arabia will launch flights to Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan from next month, it announced on Tuesday.

The direct flight from Sharjah to Kabul will commence on October 4, 2018.

The flight will operate four times per week, on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

The outbound flight from UAE will depart from Sharjah International Airport (SHJ) at 6.40am and arrive in Kabul International Airport (KBL) at 9.40am local time. The return flight will leave Kabul at 10.40am and arrive in Sharjah at 1.00pm local time.

Adel Al Ali, group CEO of Air Arabia, said: “Kabul is a new addition to our network that will meet the needs of thousands of people traveling between Afghanistan and the UAE as well as the wider region.”

Air Arabia currently operates flights to more than 150 routes across the globe from four hubs located in the Middle East and North Africa at Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan.

The airline reported a net profit of Dhs230m for the first half of the year, a 12 per cent decrease compared to Dhs261m posted during the same period last year.

It said it remained profitable despite the “economic pressure that airlines have witnessed in the second quarter of this year, which was driven by lower yield margins, higher fuel prices and seasonality shift in traffic that the market has experienced”.

Air Arabia flew 4.2 million passengers during the first half of 2018 and its average seat load factor for the first six month of 2018 – passengers carried as a percentage of available seats – stood at 79 per cent.