Royal Jordanian eyes Africa expansion

State-backed airline Royal Jordanian is set to expand its African footprint with the launch of four routes to the continent, the loss-making carrier said Saturday. Royal Jordanian, which booked a JD39.2m ($55.3m) loss in the first half of 2011, will begin operations to the Nigerian city of Lagos in November. The route will be followed by flights “in the near future” to Accra in Ghana, the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, the airline said in an emailed statement. The carrier expects to capitalise on the large number of Muslim pilgrims that will continue their journey on to the Saudi cities of Makkah and Medina, CEO Hussein Dabbas said in the statement.“We have no proper connection with Africa and we are seeing that the African continent is up and coming, economically and the people have started to have a lot of disposable income to travel,” Dabbas told Arabian Business last year.“We would like to expand into the continent to expand more on the network and connect the African nations with Jordan and the Middle East.” Royal Jordanian has existing routes to Khartoum in Sudan, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, but Lagos marks the airline’s first expansion into Sub-Saharan Africa. The state-backed carrier struggled with political unrest, high oil and a decline in tourism across the Middle East during the first half of the year. In July, the airline said its fuel bill had reached JD135m ($190m) in the six months to June 30, compared to JD93m and JD63m in the same period in 2010 and 2009 respectively. The impact of the Arab Spring, which slowed tourism to a trickle in traditional travel hotspots such as Egypt and Tunisia, led the airline to scrap 677 round-trip flights.