Stop playing with Kuwait Airways! Whoever is responsible, stop this cunning dirty games. We are not idiots. Since the invasion, Kuwait Airways has been drastically falling down. Everybody blamed the loss of the fleet and aircraft on the invasion. I still remember, and I am sure many others in the country, that Kuwait Airways was the best carrier in the Middle East.

What happened with the national carrier? Why has it started an extreme nosedive in the past few years and nobody bothers about it. Nobody speaks until a tragedy happens. An almost fatal flight this week bound to Jeddah landed without a single engine working. Hamdullilah everyone onboard was saved by the mercy of Allah. I heard that Salem Al-Othainah, Minister of Communications and Acting Minister of Social Affairs and Labour, is asking the planes to be grounded because they are unsafe. Why then the planes are in the sky? Today another plane to Jeddah had a snag. There was a delay and the plane had to be changed.

There are priorities in life. Human beings are more important. If Kuwait Airways has booked passengers, they can transfer them to other airlines. The money they will pay to transfer passengers is far less than the money they will lose if a plane crashes, God forbid, and kills more than 200 people.

Lives of people are more important than delayed passengers. As it is you are losing money left, right and centre but do not wait to have hundreds of people perish in a flight and then decide to wake up to do something. It will be too late to compensate people – the price will be too high in both human life and money. Kuwait Airways’ fleet was not upgraded post-1990. It seems we are talking about a poor government in a remote place on earth that does not have any resources at all. Even those countries have airlines that we hardly ever hear have crashed.

I have been hearing about the privatization of Kuwait Airways for 20 years. Finally, the parliament approved it. So, what are you waiting for? Is it so difficult to put together a committee and evaluate the price of the airline and then sell it. Excuse me, if you cannot do it, give it to Qatar Airways and Emirates to solve the problem. Maybe they can do the job.

Maybe Emirates will buy Kuwait Airways unless there is someone else who is waiting for the company’s balance sheet to become zero and get it almost for free. It is not shameful to ask for expertise if we cannot do it ourselves. Ask experts who have better experience and who can revive the company. We do not care, take it and enhance it. We want to fly Kuwait Airways and be proud.

By Badrya Darwish
badrya_d@kuwaittimes.net
http://twitter.com/badryad