Oman Air (WY, Muscat) has leased a part of its Dubai International slot portfolio to Sri Lanka's FitsAir (8D, Colombo International) and Bangladesh's US-Bangla Airlines (BS, Dhaka) for the Summer 2023 season.

The Sri Lankan carrier will be able to operate daily flights from Colombo International to Dubai using a 180-seat A320-200 aircraft between March 26 and October 28, 2023. The privately-owned carrier currently operates three A320ceo jets and one ATR72-200(QC) on scheduled services from Colombo to Malé, Dubai, and Chennai. It confirmed to ch-aviation that it was planning to use the slots leased from Oman Air to increase the frequency of its services to Dubai.

Meanwhile, US-Bangla Airlines has leased 3x weekly slots for services from Dhaka, operated using a 164-seat B737-800. The Bangladeshi airline currently connects Dhaka with Dubai 10x weekly.

Both slot leases are for babysitting, which indicates that Oman Air had no plans to use them in the coming summer season. By leasing them to other airlines, it can protect the slots from being returned due to non-use.

Oman Air currently operates 21x weekly flights from Muscat to Dubai using B737-8s and occasionally B787-9s, the ch-aviation schedules module shows.