Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - Saudi LCC Nasair - Abu Dhabi dreaming after Dubai diddlysquat

I've not even heard of this airline before. Has anyone seen much on it?

Nasair could land in Abu Dhabi in weeks (http://www.gulfnews.com/business/Aviation/10197347.html) [Gulfnews]
CEO Edward Winter told Gulf News that flights to Abu Dhabi and Dubai are a top priority because of heavy passenger traffic between the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

"Unfortunately, we could not obtain slots at Dubai airport. Obviously, we would like to get these slots in future," he said.

Nasair expects to announce flights to Abu Dhabi in the "next few weeks."

Winter said for a Saudi Arabian airline "the UAE is such an important market to serve" because of the flow of both leisure and religious travel. Outside the Gulf region, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen are among the key markets Nasair has identified for route expansion.

It seems to be a budget carrier with a religious-traveller focus, into Saudi...
"Over the coming weeks and months we will be rolling out a lot more international destinations. The key traffic flows will be the UAE, India, Pakistan and Egypt. Religious traffic is very important,"

IS the religious traveller market part of the reason for Emirates' LCC aspirations? Is EK following QF's footsteps this time? ;)
(Obviously the LCC part - JetStar doesn't have much of a religious travel market, 2008 World Youth Day excepted. MidEast airlines seem to have the religious market sewn up...)

There's a huge market for LCCs in general in the Gulf area:

(1) to serve intra-Gulf travel (religious, tourism and business) as well as to meet the needs of the enormous expat communities traveling back and forth to Asia and other locales,
(2) as cheaper alternatives to the big carriers since not everyone living and working in the Gulf has scads of $$$.

I think Air Arabia claims that only 3% of the air travel in and from the Gulf is flown on LCCs.

I've booked a flight in two weeks between Sharjah and Riyadh -- wish me luck and look for the trip report!

Isn't flying to SHJ pretty much the same as flying to DXB? Assuming you don't get caught up in some sort of traffic mess because of an accident or something, it's only an extra 20-30 minutes further out...
Not flown to SHJ myself, but I think that, by the time you exited the monster of an airport that is DXB, you will already have covered the first 15 mins from SHJ, thereby giving the DXB traveller an advantage of, what, 10 minutes?

I've booked a flight in two weeks between Sharjah and Riyadh -- wish me luck and look for the trip report!

Godspeed! (and keep those reports coming ;))

If you were looking for an even more exciting trip, how about Iraqi Air, on a 727? :)

Isn't flying to SHJ pretty much the same as flying to DXB? Assuming you don't get caught up in some sort of traffic mess because of an accident or something, it's only an extra 20-30 minutes further out...
Not flown to SHJ myself, but I think that, by the time you exited the monster of an airport that is DXB, you will already have covered the first 15 mins from SHJ, thereby giving the DXB traveller an advantage of, what, 10 minutes?

SHJ is a little further but not too bad -- I've flown Air Arabia out of SHJ twice.

There is a danger of getting caught in truly horrendous traffic if you're traveling at the wrong time of day. But at the right time of day the ride is pretty quick.

Plus for the price difference it's worth a little more effort. DXB-RUH was over AED 3000 on EK, under AED 1000 on both Nasair and Air Arabia.

NasAir must be looking into extremely competitive slots at DXB. However, capacity shouldn't be a problem once T3 opens. LCCs are extremely important for DXB's growth.
Religious travel is important for the Gulf region and in such a religion-conscious region, the aviation industry does little to cater to religious travel (although aviation is ironically associated with extremist religion).

A new LCC which is not bad to fly at all, except for it is still kinda new and i dont think they have all their plans and schedules ironed out yet, and they dont have manyplanes yet, so there is a good chance of delays

Actually, airlines such as Jazeera, Air Arabia and Bahrain Air CANNOT afford to relax their punctuality-since they have so few aircraft, use efficieny as a key marketing point, and operate short-haul flights where 15-20 minutes delay can be a big deal.

my point was whenever there is a mechanical or any type of delay, the next few flights on that plane will affected since they do not have many planes, or for that matter crews, to move around. With NAS and Sama in Saudi, delays are very common

unfortunately my Saudi visa has been "delayed", requiring a resubmission, so I won't be taking that Nasair flight next week after all. :mad:

While the Nasair website is pretty easy to navigate, there was no "cancel" feature that I could find for a reservation. An email to Nasair has yielded nothing.

HedgeFundFlyer, does your travel insurance (maybe even CC travel insurance) cover visa delays that prevent travel?