BeOnd's belief...

It’s a daring concept: airliners outfitted with an all-business class interior, operating from a remote (if desirable) location, and going up against some of the world’s best airlines. Daring? Some might call it foolhardy. But beOnd Airlines believes it has a formula that can work.

Although the airline’s head office is in Dubai, its operational hub is Malé, capital of the Maldives. The Indian Ocean archipelago has long been an upmarket holiday destination, much favoured by honeymooners and wealthy couples. For that reason, many European, Middle East and Asian carriers fly there.

The airline has been financed by a combination of traditional investors and – particularly – private family offices. Additionally, around the time this issue of Arabian Aerospace appears, a round of fundraising will hopefully have raised between $23 to $30 million in additional funds.

That funding will be needed if beOnd is to reach its target of reaching a fleet of 32 aircraft in the next three to four years. This may sound ambitious, but “the market is there,” insists CEO Tero Taskila.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the current global shortage of new and used airliners “The biggest problem is ‘Do we have access to that number of aircraft?’ We’re certainly campaigning for those. We believe we’re in a position next year to introduce six aircraft and grow at six to eight aircraft a year.”

Malé’s Velana International Airport “is quite constrained for parking, but that will change. A new terminal is likely to open by the end of this year and there are further developments to be done at the airport by the time we reach 32 aircraft.”

However, not all beOnd’s planned fleet may be based there. Taskila said that the airline’s business model has been designed to be scaleable, with the company potentially setting up Maldives-type luxury leisure airline operations in other countries.

The company’s initial services, launched in November 2023, were to Munich, Zurich and Riyadh. Kuwait, Jeddah and Bangkok are all either already in the pipeline for services, or are being closely studied. Asia, especially China, is a future target. Every new aircraft joining the fleet is likely to lead to two or three new destinations being added to the route map, with Asia the top priority, followed by the MENA region.

The carrier’s initial fleet consists of a 44-seat Airbus A319 and a 68-seat Airbus A321; both are working well, Taskila said, with charter requests flowing in. With a global shortage of narrowbody aircraft: “We are trying to take any aircraft we can get our hands on.” For the future, the company is looking at both A321neoLR (long range) and A321XLR (extra long range).

The company is in discussions over the XLR’s performance – it has a 4,700nm/8,700km range – but is looking carefully at whether the price premium it commands over the A321neoLR is too large when compared to the latter’s range of 4,000nm/7,400km.

One possibility would be to take an A320 ACJ (Airbus Corporate Jet), “which typically is not of interest to traditional carriers, but would actually fit for us.” If beOnd went down this route, it would outfit the large business jet with 56 seats. Interestingly, the ACJ’s range (4,950nm/9,160km) is even greater than that of the A321XLR, but the business jet version is less expensive.

As a start-up airline with a niche market, initial load factors have naturally been low (typically around 30 per cent), but these are now moving towards the 50 per cent mark: “The average has been growing all the time, so we’re now in healthy numbers.

“Being a premium carrier, it’s more about building trust first. It’s not a low-cost model where people take a risk and say ‘It’s only €21 [$25]’ if the airline fails.’”

Although beOnd is a scheduled operation, it is receiving “a lot of interest from the charter market”.

“We foresee that we will allocate some aircraft time to specialist charters like football teams.” ‘Round-the-world’ charters are another niche market, with several booked in for 2025/26.