About Aviation and Airlines in the Kuwait
The Kuwait Aviation’s early development can be traced back in 1927-1928, when Kuwait opened its first airport located in the Dasma area, which is a bit far from the city. It was called the Dasma Airport and the Imperial Airways was the airlines that sent the first flights to Kuwait. Imperial Airways was related to British Airways because Kuwait was once a British protectorate and so Britain was supporting the development of Kuwait in the early 19th century until Kuwait was recognized as an independent emirate.
Kuwait aviation is rising steadily and its government sees the need to continually invest its capital on its growth and development. As increasing volume of international passengers are coming in, Kuwait is enjoying heightened regional activity for tourism industry. More passengers are looking for low-cost carriers (LCCs) and Kuwait government sees it as an opportunity to meet the new demand. With the more improved airport facilities and services, it ventures on renewing efforts to privatize the national carriers to cater to this increasing market demand. Kuwait Airways for one is paving the way to meet the growing demand for airlines today and the years ahead.
In 2012, the Kuwait International Airport made a record of 8.9 million passengers compared to the 2008 record of 7.23 million. This apparently tells that the airport is doing well in meeting its target number of passengers annually and potentially hitting its goal to reaching 13 million in 2016. The efforts are clearly set to achieve the goals but there are also identified restraints that could affect the ability to reach KIA’s target, such as the following: there are passengers that utilize diverted route considering that KIA’s capacity could only accommodate around 2 million travelers; these alternate route are usually reserved for private aircrafts; there is also a need to overhaul the airport so that it could accommodate more travelers and to further boost its growth and development; overhauling requires the need to construct new terminals and expand its runways; it also requires enhanced control tower operations and this means increasing its cargo facilities, and investing on more high-technologies. Furthermore, there is also the move to increase the low-cost carriers so they can address the problem on increasing capacity to transfer passengers from one point of destination to another.
The Kuwait government aims to energize its national economy by opening itself up to investments that are aligned with the Kuwait Development Plan or KDP, which runs from 2015 to 2020. Its strategic goal is to direct major investments on key areas like transport and logistics infrastructure and services. This means that Kuwait has to strengthen its sea and air links so as to enhance its capacity to connect with the region and even beyond the scope of the region hence major projects are geared towards improving transportation facilities and services including aviation industry.
As the Kuwait government promotes its fullest potentials to boost its national economy, Kuwait has gained natural advantages to begin with. Its location is an advantage being proximate to populous markets. Its transportation and logistics sector plays a vital role in serving these markets. This calls for more investors in transport and logistics infrastructure and the private sector has a very important role to play in this growing market with the following segments: bus, including the airlines.
Kuwait’s aviation sector may be considered in the early stages at this point as compared with its neighboring emirates and in the Middle East. The expansion of investments coming into Kuwait has been moving gradually even if there has already been an approval to have a mega-project to upgrade the airport in 2014 to meet the growing demand of time
