Category: Information

Was just at Sultan Center, seems they have a major phone line problem because all their Knet machines are down and they have “Please Pay Cash” posters all over the place. That can’t be good for business.

Hello everyone, my name is Fawaz and I am responsible for marketing communication at Jazeera Airways, in addition to being an amateur blogger of course. We have been reading your questions about Jazeera Airways on this blog over the past few months. Questions that ranged from “how can we afford fares as low as KD 5?” To questions about our brand name. In an effort to answer all your questions, we recently asked Mark to gather questions you had for Jazeera Airways and in return we promised him that we would answer all of them, exclusively on this blog. Lets start

Mark: How can you afford to offer super low fares?

This is a great question that I will answer in two parts. First, we prefer to fly our planes full of travelers paying less per seat rather than flying with less travelers paying more. Other airlines prefer high fares and less passengers, which does not make sense to us. Why would they want to impact less people? For us, we enjoy flying people and being part of their lives.

The second part involves our business model that works to achieve high efficency and a lower operational cost base. In other words, we do more with less. We achieve our high efficiency by employing

1. state of the art technology to streamline processes
2. hardworking, multitasking, highly motivated team

In sum, we can afford super low fares because our business model is based on volume more than yield, and because we depend on leading technologies and great team to lower our cost.

Follow-up: How are you able to lower your cost?

We are able to maintain a lower cost base and high level of quality and safety through three main ways:

1- Recruitment- We recruit highly motivated and committed team members. This is crucial as it has direct impact on day-to-day cost. Being able to wear different ‘hats’ (so to speak) and do the work of several people is a quality we seek in and build in our team members. That’s why we call our people our ‘high flyers’.

2- Aircraft utilization – Aircraft on the ground do not make money, so we keep our aircraft in the air where they do make money. We achieve this through quick turn-arounds at the gate. Our planes arrive at a destination, wait for our travelers to disembark, board return travelers, and fly back to base ready to take off again in less than 45 minutes.

3- A fleet of single-type fleet: the Airbus A320.

If you had Porsche and a Ferrari and Lamborghini in your drive way, you would need three different specialized garages to service them with three different mechanics and three different spare parts inventories. On the other hand, if you had three Porsches you would only need to contract a single garage to service all three and your maintenance costs would be much lower. Aircraft are the same, though much more sophisticated. Allow me to elaborate.

If an airline had an A320, an A310, an A340, and a 777, they would need certified captains, first officers, cabin crew for each type of aircraft. In this case, if a 777 pilot falls sick with the flu, an A320 pilot cannot just jump in the captain’s seat of a 777 unless she is trained on a 777. Because of this, airlines with multiple aircraft types in their fleet need to have more pilots to cover scenarios like this, more engineers who do nothing but wait for someone to get sick, and spare parts inventories to cover all types. This creates redundancies and inneficiency.

In our case, we have an all-A320 fleet. We do not need to hire more crew since any of our crew can jump in any of our aircraft and take-off and any of our engineers is licensed to work on any of our aircraft, and our spare parts inventory covers all our aircraft.

4- Investment in Technology – By investing heavily into technology, we were able to raise efficiency, reduce operational cost and drive the price of tickets down even further. We currently employ over a dozen world class technology systems and tools that range from the booking systems we use to satellite aircraft monitoring that tells us the status and integrity of each aircraft while it is in the air no matter where it is on earth, and automatically dispatches support teams and parts to the destination airport if the situation required. These are only some of the benefits of having world class Lufthansa Technik engineers and technology working with us and for us.

I am a huge fan of the Rambo movies and when I heard they were coming out with part 4 I couldn’t have been any happier. Then I found out that Matthew Fox who plays Dr Jack Shepherd on LOST was going to the be the lead bad guy in Rambo IV I was like wow, thats crazy. Now I just found out that Jack Bauer who plays Kiefer Sutherland in real life is also going to be in Rambo IV. The movie is going to come out next year, I wonder who else will end up starring in it.

A user in the forum posted that they were giving away free Krispy Kreme donuts at Marina Crescent TGIF on the sea side. If they opened already then thats pretty fast. It took Dunkin Donuts like what? 1 year to open?

Picture above is taken by LeP the user who got the free donuts.

update: a friend of mine whos brother has something to do with Krispy Kreme just told me they are opening on Eid.

Here are some riding tips from Marzouq to me:

– Never hit the breaks when going through a turn or the front of the bike will go out and you will end up on the floor

– Do not hold on to the bike when your falling, push away from it (I think thats why you hurt your wrist)

– Avoid the little white pucks they are the root of all evil, they make you slip!

– Always ride with a friend whenever possible in the beginning

– Know who to call in a situation

I am sure at one time or another you tried purchasing an item using your K-Net or Visa card and the merchant asked from you an extra fee because you are using one of these cards. They would give you the excuse that Visa or K-Net charge them a certain amount for every transaction using these cards and that you need to pay it. Well here is what you the consumer needs to know.

First lets start with K-Net. K-Net is owned by the local banks in Kuwait. They do NOT charge the merchant any transaction fee. So if an item costs KD10 and you pay using your K-Net card, the merchant will get KD10. They will not be charged a single fils by K-Net. This is a fact and you can contact 2431280 if you need any further information on this. If a store tells you that they will have to charge you extra because you are paying with K-Net then you need to report that store to K-Net using the number above.

Now Visa is a different story. Visa DOES charge the merchant 4% for every transaction. This means if you buy an item for KD10, the merchant receives KD9.600. Although the merchant pays 4% for every transaction they do NOT have the right to pass on that 4% to you. According to Visa the merchant should not charge the customer for a Visa transaction and neither are they allowed to set a minimum amount in which you could use your Visa card with. So even if the item you are buying costs 100fils, you can pay with you Visa card. In case a store does try to make you pay the 4% transaction fee, report them to your local bank and they will take care of it. If you would like more information regarding Visa, you will also need to contact your local bank.

Hope this information was helpful.

Yesterday I got an email from a reader of my blog who works at Jazeera Airways. He read some of the comments on the post 5KD to Bahrain and Dubai and noticed many people had questions about the airline. So, he has volunteered to answer any questions you put forward to him about the airlines. I will take all your questions which you can post below in the comments section and I then will forward it to him.

I will start by asking the first question: Does Jazeera Airways have any plans of expanding their flights to Europe and North America?

I was back at TriStar last night with Nat because she need to adjust her training schedule. While there I showed her the Pocket Bike they had on display. At first she thought it was for young kids but I explained to her that teenagers and adults actually ride it and not kids. She thought I was pulling her leg, so when we got back home I showed her some videos from YouTube and everyone riding the bike was either a teen or an adult. I figured maybe other people don’t know what Pocket Bikes are so below are some videos and a link to Wikipedia with info on Pocket Bikes. TriStar are selling the 49cc Pocket Bike which can hit speeds of up to 100km/h for KD190. Price might be negotiable I didn’t ask.

Here is the first video
Here is the second video
Here is the Wikipedia page

Just got an SMS from Jazeera Airways, tickets to Dubai or Bahrain are now KD5. [Link]

I was at Marina Mall yesterday meeting up with a friend when I noticed Alghanim Automotive (my sponsors) had the Escalade EXT on display right outside Virgin. The EXT was my favorite version of the old Escalade and I didn’t know the new one was out yet in Kuwait. So I emailed my contact at Alghanim and asked him about the price and this is what I found out. The Escalade EXT costs KD18,500 and if you trade in your car you get 500KD back. Also the regular Escalade (ie: not pickup) which I previously took out for a drive now costs KD19,500 and according to my contact the price is negotiable. Thats around KD1,500 cheaper then when I reviewed it which is pretty cool but still way out of my league.

Nat has had her eye on this phone for a while now and it just got released. Barrak the local dealer dont have it yet but Xpress Cell do and are selling it for KD145. The price is bound to go down soon though once it becomes more available. I am going to pass by and check it out tonight. If you want to call Xpress Cell their number is 808880. [Link]

There is a girl who hasn’t changed physically or mentally for 12 years now. The girl is still 9 months old even though she is supposed to be 12 years old. She has a condition that has no name and no other person has this condition. She is stuck being 9 months old forever. There is a video of her and more info after the jump. [Link] #

A nice comparison of the top ten most used BitTorrent sites, they recommend BTjunkie.com. [Link]

Yesterday night Choowy Goowy sent me a whole bunch of cookies.

Firstly they now have 3 new flavors:
1- Choowy Light: Choowy Original Cookies but with 50% reduced fat
2- Toffee Choowies: Choowy toffee chips
3- Choowy Solo: Plain Choowy Cookie

The second thing they now have is something called Treat-X. Treat-X is a luxurious box filled with 50 small pieces of cookies of different flavors. When I first got it I was like in shock, it looks really fucking cool and totally unexpected. The whole presentation looks very classy and its filled with sooo many cookies inside and they are like bite size and it had 5 different flavors!

Finally I also got an email from Choowy Goowy guy today telling me that their Booza Booza ice cream is now available on 6alabat.com.

Anyway for more information on Choowy Goowy you can visit their website on ChoowyGoowy.com. The picture above is from the inside of the Treat-X box.

This is very sad news, Alan Fletcher an incredibly talented Graphic Designer passed away on the 21st of September. I can’t believe this news wasn’t more publicized. Alan Fletcher was a founding member of the design agency Pentagram and is among the most influential figures in British graphic design history. I posted about him previously when I wrote about the Commercial Bank of Kuwait logo. This is really really sad news. If you never read my post on the CBK logo then you should since there is a very nice piece written by Alan Fletcher where he talks about his experience coming to Kuwait and the idea behind the logo. I can’t believe he is dead! [Link]