Bahrain Air & Customer Loyalty

Bahrain Air's newly introduced customer loyalty scheme is innovative and deserves attention regarding customer interest. As for August under the new initiative, passengers need to collect their boarding cards and exchange them for free flights at an exchange rate of: 

• One way ticket offered for seven boarding cards and/or
• Return ticket offered for 11 boarding cards

Would be wonderful to see Qatar Airways, Emirates, Etihad and the rest get involved in this too and even better if they go into a price war to see who can offer the most for the least.

Customer loyalty is an area that has plenty of room for innovation, hopefully customers reward such initiatives so that carriers feel compelled to do more in the future.

Dubai Airport's Increased Traffic

Dubai airport will be world's second busiest by November. On the one hand this is another page in the progress/development of this travel hub, however one could also begin to question how this will impact the everyday travelers experience of going through such a large airport. Dubai International handled a 4.7 million passengers in July, an increase of 400,000 over the prior month, and almost a 10% increase year-on-year over the corresponding period in 2010. If the current rate of traffic growth continues, Dubai international airport may overtake Heathrow for the number one position by 2015. Understandably this could make the check in / security / customs / boarding process back logged unless proper processes are in place to handle such an increase in customer traffic. By By 2020 it is projected that the airport will handle around 98 million passengers per annum. Travelers should probably anticipate leaving home earlier, much earlier.