SAFI Airways! 4Q ! SFW

Safi Airways is looking beyond the complicated domestic operating environment and hopes to enhance its international profile with the addition of a 285-seat A340-300 it plans to use on its thrice-weekly Kabul-Frankfurt service. The aircraft, formerly with Air Comet and Virgin Atlantic Airways, will provide a 30% capacity increase on a route Safi used to operate with a 767-200ER. CCO Claus Fischer told ATWOnline that loads on the route, launched in June, have improved ahead of what he expects to be a challenging winter season. Interline agreements with Emirates and Lufthansa will go into effect this month, offering easier onward connections. Safi's twice-daily Kabul-Dubai service enjoys load factors close to 100% and a third daily flight is expected to be added soon. Delhi will join the network in February, followed by Beijing in March or April and an unidentified destination in Saudi Arabia soon thereafter. Fischer told this website that Safi already has secured traffic rights to both China and Saudi Arabia. Frankfurt service will increase to four- or five-times-weekly in the summer.

The airline halted domestic service in June. Safety remains an issue in the troubled country and competitors like Pamir Airways and Kam Air offer fares that make profitable domestic flying impossible. "We cannot compete with a €45 fare for a single domestic flight. Our idea was to offer highly operational and safe services on domestic routes. But this is not possible with such low fares," Fischer told this website.

Safi now operates the A340, 767 and two 737-300s. It plans to make a decision about the future of its 737s and their potential replacement in the spring. "This depends on the leasing companies. Sometimes a lessor triples the rates for an Afghanistan-registered carrier," Fischer said, highlighting the difficulties facing airlines in the country. "For example, the infrastructure at Kabul [International] Airport has to be improved urgently. Fuel is twice as expensive as in Dubai and we have to deal with a curfew between 21:00 and 06:00." On the bright side, Safi expects its passenger traffic in 2010 to nearly double to 750,000 from the 400,000 it will carry this year.