Air Seychelles has made changes to its regional network as part of its business transformation plan to further strengthen and safeguard the sustainability of the airline.
The carrier will now operate daily flights to Johannesburg from 3 June 2019 (up from six-weekly), six flight a week to Mumbai from 12 May (from five-weekly), and a new seasonal route to Antananarivo (Madagascar) from 3 July for 4 months, but will suspend its Abu Dhabi service from 11 May due to poor demand.
The airline has also announced that its first new Airbus A320neo aircraft will arrive in July this year and said it plans to grow its ground handling and cargo business.
The plan, is aimed at increasing efficiencies by maximising the airline’s resources has been approved by Air Seychelles Board and both shareholders, the Government of the Republic of Seychelles and Etihad Airways.
Air Seychelles chairman, Jean Weeling-Lee said: “To sustain Air Seychelles current and future growth it is important that we continue to review the operational and organizational efficiency of the business constantly.
“In 2018 the airline embarked on a strategic transformation plan to restructure its business and moving forward in 2019, to safeguard the long term profitability and sustainability of the airline we will continue to implement the transformation plan to meet the continuous challenges we face in the environment in which we operate.”
Chief executive officer, Remco Althuis said after closely monitoring the performance of the Abu Dhabi route and considering all options, the airline decided to suspend its Abu Dhabi service.
“In the past year the route has delivered low passenger numbers and we have even noticed weaker travel demand from the UAE, Europe or Asia connecting with the route, making it not a viable ongoing commercial operation for Air Seychelles,” he added.
The airline said the developments across the entire network will be coupled by a number of revenue-generating initiatives and key projects in 2019 focused at strengthening non-airline areas of the business including the ground handling, cargo handling and engineering services.
These it said have been one of the major source of revenues for the airline over the past year given the increasing number of customer airlines operating at the Seychelles International Airport.
