2013, The Fun Begins

Barely a week into the new year and developments in the GCC and MENA have already started.

It was only yesterday 7 January 2013 that I blogged about 2013 A Game Changer , only to read today 8 January 2013 reports regarding Etihad, possibily buying an equity stake in Alitalia SpA from Air France-KLM who own 25% of the Italian carrier. Nothing unusual about that, Etihad expands through acquiring equity stakes in airlines, except for the fact that Etihad and Air France-KLM have recently signed a code share agreement. How accurate this is remains to be seen!

Similarly, competition and choice in the Saudi Arabia market is on the rise with Flydubai starting  a twice weekly service to Ha'il next February, Qatar Airways already launched yesterday a four weekly service to Gassim and finally Emirates added a third A380 service to Jeddah, for four days in January, in support of the Dubai Shopping Festival.