flydubai's operations have now already recovered, according to the airline's CEO Ghaith al Ghaith. Speaking to Simple Flying at the recent Dubai Airshow, al Ghaith revealed that in terms of passengers numbers and flights, the airline is even beating its pre-pandemic figures, despite having not resumed flights to a handful of destinations.

The pandemic's influence on the aviation industry is slowly waning, as vaccinations and testing allow for safer travels. Having reopened in July 2020, Dubai has established itself as a solid post-pandemic travel destination, and its home carriers are really starting to see the impact of this.

flydubai has fully recovered

Speaking exclusively to Simple Flying at the recent 2021 edition of the Dubai Airshow, Ghaith al Ghaith, CEO of flydubai, told us that the airline has fully recovered, commenting,

“I’m not surprised, you might be, but we are fully recovered as far as flydubai is concerned in terms of the number of flights and the number of passengers that we are carrying. We are actually really doing a little bit better because the yield, as expected is a little bit higher.”

With its fleet of all Boeing 737s, flydubai plans to serve 92 destinations from Addis Ababa to Zanzibar during the month of December, according to aviation data experts Cirium. This includes Israel after the airline became the first to connect Dubai with Tel Aviv. 124 of the airline's 3,198 rotations planned for December are to Tel Aviv, making it the airline's most served destination.

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Some destinations haven't returned yet

Unfortunately, flydubai still has a handful of challenges to overcome with its return to service, as some of its destinations remain closed due to stricter travel restrictions. According to al Ghaith,

“We’re not flying as many flights to some destinations because not all countries are open, which also gives you that much positive moving forward as more countries open.”

In place of these frequencies, flydubai has launched flights to come routes that the airline didn't serve before the pandemic, including a handful of season flights that will return next summer. Gaith hinted that the coming months would be good for flydubai, and its competitors, adding,

“We guessed a few months ago that for this winter Dubai will be the only games in town because all the countries are closed, we are open. Our government did a fantastic job dealing with the pandemic, so we added a lot of capacity and opened as many routes as we can… this is what’s now giving us the ability to say we’re actually carrying more passengers, flying more aircraft, [and] flights.”

What do you make of flydubai's post-pandemic recovery? Let us know what you think in the comments!