BeOnd (B4, Malé) may pursue a second air operator's certificate to tackle new markets as part of a growth strategy, CEO Tero Taskila told the Runway Girl Network portal. He says the carrier has restarted talks with various airports, including in the Caribbean.
"We are rekindling those discussions that we had pre-Covid with other markets in the Indian Ocean, but also other destinations, islands like the Caribbean, which hopefully will see a BeOnd AOC in the next, let’s say, 18 to 36 months," he said.
BeOnd currently links Malé with Dubai World Central, Milan Malpensa (via Dubai), Zurich (also via Dubai), and Riyadh. All flights except the Riyadh services are operated by a 44-passenger A319-100. The thrice-weekly Riyadh roundtrips are operated by a recently arrived 68-passenger A321-200. Taskila says he wants to grow to 32 aircraft in five years, adding six aircraft over the next 12 months, and another six to eight in the next 12-24 months.
"We never designed the plan or the product to be specific to a certain destination," he added. "In that sense, we do see ourselves a little bit like a luxury hotel in that we can have an operation in the Middle East but we can have operations in North America or Asia. And we will provide the same product/service in those places and hopefully, at one point in time, we can connect the dots."
During the airline's planning phase, it was speaking of flying to over 60 destinations including airports in Asia and Australia. Among other things, its operations are currently constrained by only having older aircraft unable to fly to many of the targeted airports nonstop, undermining its original premise of competing with bigger operators by flying to Malé without the need for any intermediate stops.
