Hill set to bow out on a high

When 16-year-old London schoolboy Peter Hill was rejected by the Royal Air Force because of childhood asthma, he thought his aviation dream had come to an end.

But a friend of his careers officer at school found him a commercial trainee post with British Airways and the rest, as they say, is history.

At the end of 2011 Hill will step down as chief executive of Oman Air, having seen more than 50 years’ service to the industry and been at the leading edge of some of the great success stories – with Oman Air the latest of them.

He was due to retire in September with a five-week tour of New Zealand coinciding with the Rugby World Cup finals before settling down in his beloved Sri Lanka to work with his wife on their foundation, helping Sri Lankan youngsters understand dance and traditions from the island’s ancient culture.

But the Omani government – owners of Oman Air – had other plans and persuaded him to stay on another three months to help get a successor in place. Hill agreed – but only after the rugby trip was completed.  “I was there in Sydney when England won, I went to the tournament in Wales and I wasn’t going to miss this one,” he said.

Hill was one of the founding team that set up Emirates Airline, working with Sheikh Ahmed, Maurice Flanagan and Tim Clark in those early days when the aviation world doubted the sanity of the team’s ambitions to create a world-leading airline.

“I learned a lot from my time at Emirates,” Hill said.

He left Dubai in 1996 for what turned out to be a two-year sabbatical “I was travelling five days out of seven and was burnt out. I went back to London to recharge my batteries and opened a pub called The Constitution in Camden Town with a business partner. But, after two years, Tim Clark walked in and asked me if I’d had enough time pulling the pints and fancied coming back into the business. I did. I realised I was never going to go back to the pub. I was back in the airline business.”

The job was to head Sri Lankan as Emirates had taken a major stake in the airline.

“I had a great time there. After that relationship ended I went back to Dubai. I was approaching 62 and thinking of retiring but at that time Ghaith al Ghaith was starting up flydubai. Ghaith and I go back a long way and he was happy to have me alongside and we got it off to a great start.

“Then, out of the blue, came the offer from Oman. Sadly the CEO had died. They were in a bit of a pickle without a natural successor and, of course, 18 months earlier they had separated from Gulf Air. So I came down here in July 2008 for two years. Those two years came knocking very quickly and the chairman said stay another year, and I did,” Hill said.

In the three years of Hill’s reign, Oman Air has been transformed from a small, largely unknown, regional carrier into an airline of global renown. This year the French travel industry voted it airline of the year; the UK commended it as runner-up behind Etihad; Germany rated it the best leisure airline; the world’s passenger experience association awarded it top prize for connectivity and the icing on the cake came with a four-star rating from SkyTrax and the title of the world’s best business class seat, a mantle that turned some heads of airlines further up the Gulf.

“We’ve got off to a good start created a good image,” Hill said. “People can see what we are doing. We are making waves and I like seeing our peer group taking flights with us to find out why people are talking so much about this airline with just its seven wide-bodied aircraft.”

After the 2007 break-up of Gulf Air, the fledgling Omani airline had seen the need to start flying to international destinations and leased two long-haul aircraft to begin operations to London Gatwick and Bangkok.

“That whole thing was an interim product but it didn’t do them much good because the product itself wasn’t really very good. It might have been better to start afresh with the new Airbus A330s. So, we had a real hotchpotch of a long-haul operation and a sound solid base of regional operations around the Gulf and the Indian sub continent. But we had seven A330s starting to arrive in 15 months. There was also a doubling of the 737 fleet from eight aircraft to 15 and the ambitions to launch a whole range of new routes to use the A300s. But nothing much had been done,” Hill said. The challenge took Hill back to the early days at Emirates when they had to start an airline in six months “I realised that what we did then was appropriate to what we needed to do now,” Hill said. “Assemble a good team of people who can do the job and pass on their knowledge to other people in the organisation to help bring them through.

“It’s a lot more challenging to try to bring on an existing organisation than it is to start with a clear sheet of paper like we did at Emirates. There is a whole range of challenges. In Sri Lankan I had it with the unions, while here it was a lack of exposure to the requirements of a top class international airline and a need to match the products we were going to be facing from our competitors in the Gulf. We were jumping in at the deep end. The government was prepared to invest.

“They had specked up the new aircraft very nicely and had already put a lot of the gizmos in, which was visionary from the chairman at the time. So clearly they wanted to go down the high quality route. We had to create a niche and differentiate the airline from the products our competitors had.”

Many people raised eyebrows at the commercial wisdom of the quality offer from Oman Air but Hill defends the logic.

“We have a country virtually unknown outside this region but is getting recognition as a result of what it has to offer. It is different from the rest of the GCC. It is truly a potential holiday tourism resort because of the diversity, history and natural beauty that the country enjoys. 

“There are still people in the world prepared to pay for that exclusivity, that solitude, that peace and quiet. It is probably exactly the opposite to how Dubai has been positioning itself over the last 20 years but very complementary in being able to attract the same type of customers – the very well-heeled people who are prepared to spend to enjoy.

“We set about defining what we could do and making ourselves known as the Gateway to Oman, promoting point-to-point and then following with a network.  Being a hub is the by-product. This strategy is completely opposite to the other Gulf carriers. Our country is our soul – not the strength of our network.”

Oman Air targeted wealthy business hubs in Germany, the UK, France and Italy as well as Thailand and Malaysia, where there were already good ties with the Omani people.

“We need to get Oman on the map,” Hill said. “We work closely with the Ministry of Tourism and there needs to be money spent on attracting tourists. In the last three years I have not seen the level of tourists coming into Oman that we would have hoped for after having put the airline on the map in the way we have. As a result we are carrying far too many people through Oman than we are to Oman. There is only one way to do it and that is spend money and get out and do a solid marketing campaign at the target markets.

“We have won half the battle. But if people don’t know what Oman has to offer then they will keep by-passing and using Oman Air just to get to traditional destinations.”

Oman Air’s move to become the first to bring full connectivity throughout all cabins was seen as a coup for the relatively small airline. “It was fantastic,” Hill said. “We knew all airlines would do it eventually but it was great to be first. And that offer worked with our fantastic cabins – great designs with open space.”

The airline also includes 15 Boeing 737s in its fleet, which Hill says could be refurbished soon. “The colours are wrong, bulkhead designs are 20 years out of date and feature the Khanjar (the dagger) and that doesn’t reflect the Oman of today.”

More recently Oman Air has been purchasing Embraer 175s to run thin routes and increase frequency. “The Embraer is a totally different experience,” Hill said. “Its is a smaller aircraft but you feel there’s more space. We are very happy with them and there are more coming. They are half the cost with half the seats; 70 people on a 737 you lose your shirt, 70 people on an Embraer and you make money.”

Hill said he would be sad to say goodbye to so many friends made in the industry over the past half century – but typically he is looking forward and not back.

Oman Air has great opportunities. In 10 years time it will have got its network expanded and taken some more wide-bodied aircraft on. I would expect it to use the 737s and E175s to penetrate new markets in Eastern Europe. But it needs all that traffic to come to Oman and the tourism industry in Oman needs to get its act together to make it a serious destination for serious travellers. If we can do that, Oman has a great future and Oman Air has a great future too.”