Flydubai was one of the protagonists of theArabian Travel Market that took place in Dubai from May 6 to 9..
In his booth, among the largest in the huge pavilion dedicated to the realities of Middle Eastern tourism, showcased what the company offers, in terms of seats, aboard its Boeing 737-800 and Boeing 737 MAX, including the new lie-flats that have so far been installed in Business Class on 8 737-800s: the airline has 29 such aircraft (compared to 57 737 MAXs), and the retrofit will cover most of those 29, including Economy Class where all seats will be equipped with individual screens for inflight entertainment.
The booth included an ‘upper deck’, where access was allowed only to guests with invitations (and The Flight Club was among them), and Where Gaith CEO at Gaith met with the press talking about the news in view between now and 2026.
First among them business class suites which were announced a year ago for an entry into service starting in early 2024. Which, however, did not occur.
During the briefing at the Arabian Travel Market, Gaith Al Gaith (who has led the company since its creation in 2008) Postponed the debut of the suites by one year, to the first quarter of 2025 citing “problems finding materials and delays in seat delivery.”
Suites are Business Class 3.0 for Flydubai, which had debuted in 2009 as ‘the low-cost airline of Emirates’ with a all Economy Class cabin.
Business 1.0, consisting of recliners in a 2-2 configuration for a total of 12 places, had been installed On part of the fleet (then consisting only of B737-800s) as of 2013.
With the arrival, starting in 2017, of the MAX (-8 and -9) we had seen version 2.0, with 10 lie-flat seats on the MAX 8 and 16 on the MAX 9. Seats and configuration are identical to those in the Relatively new Mint Class, the domestic first class of the American airline Jetblue..
The suites represent a huge step forward, in terms of comfort and privacy, because the layout of the cabin includes. a 1-1 configuration and each suite (created specifically for the company by Safran Seats in collaboration with JPA Design) will be equipped with a door.
Lo video screen will have a size of 17 inches and will be equipped with Bluetooth system, allowing passengers to enjoy inflight entertainment using their own headphones or earbuds.
The CEO of Flydubai (whose chairman is the same as Emirates, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum) explained that “there will be a total of 28 MAXs that will have suites in the Business Class cabin on board“.
And that “the new onboarding product will be dedicated to our longer routesand, then those to Southeast Asia and Europe.” clarifying to The Flight Club that “Milan (Bergamo orio al Serio, ed.) will almost certainly be on the list of destinations on which we will have the new suites, both because of its distance from Dubai and because it is the only metropolitan destination we serve in Europe.”
In Italy, the second company Dubai flies to four year-round destinations: Milan (Bergamo), Pisa, Naples and Catania. A fifth will be added in summer 2024: Olbia with two weekly frequencies. Italy is also the only Western European state to be part of Flydubai’s network, which extends north-south from St. Petersburg in Russia to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and east-west from Pattaya in Thailand right to Milan/Bergamo.
Next summer there will be 125 destinations (served by 86 airplanes including 54 Boeing 737 MAX 8, 3 Boeing 737 MAX 9 and 29 Boeing 737-800), but network and fleet will undergo a drastic revolution starting in 2026, when the first wide-body aircraft will enter service.a.
Loyal to Boeing as it has always been from the beginning, Flydubai has chosen the Boeing 787-9 to fly farther and offer more capacity by ordering 30 examples of the Dreamliner.
“The main goal of the Boeing 787 will be to fly us farther and into new marketsi. I think of London in Europe and in Bangkok Thailand. Ma also to Australia, which the Dreamliners will enable us to achieve with their exceptional range. Elsewhere, however, we will offer them to provide more capacity where demand is strongest.”
As for the on-board product, “it is very likely that, unlike all our other aircraft, Dreamliners have not two classes but three, with the introduction of a premium economy cabin“, which It would allow Flydubai to align its product more closely with that of Emirates, which Is introducing premium economy on a growing number of Airbus A380s and with which has a codeshare agreement on all its routes.
The CEO confided that he could not be more precise as to routes and onboard product because, he explained, “it would be early anyway, and besides we are not sure if Boeing can meet the 2026 deadline, given the delays it is experiencing in deliveries. So we first want to make sure that we have the new aircraft on a specific date before we can talk about the other things.”
