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n a bid to further expand its network in Southeast Asia, Oman flag carrier Oman Air officially launched Monday an inaugural flight from the country'€™s capital city, Muscat, to Jakarta.

Oman Air'€™s Chief operating officer, Abdulrahman Al-Busaidy said that the large numbers of Indonesians living in the Middle East as well as the country'€™s huge umrah and haj market had encouraged the airline to open the route.

'€œI am sure that the service will meet strong demand from both leisure and business travelers and we have already accepted a high level of bookings. In addition, the timing of the launch enables us to help reunite families and friends as they come together over the winter holiday period,'€ Al-Busaidy said.

'€œWe also targeted the umrah traffic, which is huge since we also fly to Madina and Jeddah and we also target tourist traffic from Europe to Jakarta and Bali,'€ he said.

Oman Air'€™s Jakarta service will initially operate every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, with a Monday flight scheduled to be added in January next year.

Operating Airbus A330, the flights will depart from Muscat at 02:45 and arrive in Jakarta at 13:50. On the return leg, the flights will leave Jakarta at 15:50 and arrive back to Muscat at 20:55.

With around half a million Indonesian resided in the Arabian gulf, Al-Busaidy said that he was optimistic that the flights would soon reach a high-load factor.

'€œWith large numbers of Indonesians living in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, we are very optimistic,'€ he said. '€œIn fact we already decided to increase the frequency to daily operation starting from August next year,'€ he continued.

The new Muscat-Jakarta route commenced just 10 days after the airline launched its first flights to Manila. The airline'€™s service to Manila has also now been upgraded from the initial two flights a week to three, starting on Dec. 13.

The launch of the Muscat-Jakarta route together with new service to Manila, marks the start of Oman Air'€™s latest ambitious growth plan in the Southeast Asian region, especially ahead the ASEAN single market that will be implemented by the end of 2015, according to Al-Busaidy.

'€œSoutheast Asia is our focus growth, next we will open a new route to Singapore, so we are planning massive growth. We are here to stay and to grow,'€ he said.

In total, Oman Air currently operates 18 weekly flights to four Southeast Asian cities '€” Bangkok (daily), Kuala Lumpur (five per week), Manila (three per week) and Jakarta (three per week).

Oman Air is planning to further expand its long-haul operations next year. The airline will take delivery of three more Airbus A330s and six Boeing B787 Dreamliners, which it said would '€œenable further expansion of the carrier'€™s network, as well as increased frequencies on some of its existing routes'€.