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New York Times There was a time, not long ago, when the idea of jet travel in the Persian Gulf countries conjured up images of white-robed sheiks accompanied by cages full of squawking falcons and of European oil executives lounging in first-class luxury  of a frequent-flier population more at home with a large entourage than a humble rolling suitcase.
How things have changed. Now, in the domed rotunda of the old-fashioned little airport in Sharjah, you are as likely to come across a family of Egyptians returning from a shopping spree in Dubai or a group of young men from the United Arab Emirates off for a week of partying in Beirut. For the last three years, Air Arabia has been shaking up the world of Persian Gulf air travel with the Middle East's first no-frills low-cost airline. Based in the emirate of Sharjah and founded through royal decree by Sheik Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, the ruler of Sharjah, Air Arabia aims to do for air travel in the Arab world what budget airlines like Ryanair, EasyJet, JetBlue and Southwest have been doing the last decade in some Western countries.
Air Arabia first sprang onto the regional scene in 2003 with a series of light-hearted advertisements featuring cartoon figures with outsized circular heads and stocky bodies, similar in appearance to the characters in "South Park" but dressed in traditional Arab clothing and carrying luggage. Air Arabia's little round men  wearing Saudi-style white dishdashas or Levantine sherwal pantaloons and often sporting scruffy cartoon beards  danced across billboards and newspaper inserts throughout the Middle East, their startled cartoon eyes popping wide at the news of Air Arabia's cheap fares.
These fares  commonly as low as 250 dirhams (about $67 at 3.75 dirhams to the dollar) for a Sharjah-Jaipur, India, flight; or 149 dirhams (about $40 for Sharjah-Luxor, Egypt; or 110 dirhams (about $30) for Sharjah-Tehran  caused an immediate sensation, and Air Arabia's little round men are still familiar stock figures. But whether Air Arabia has actually succeeded in changing the way people in the Middle East think about regional travel has been more difficult to calculate.
Air Arabia started with a single Sharjah-Bahrain route. Within six months, it had two new regular routes connecting Sharjah to Khartoum, Sudan, and to Assiut, Egypt. Now, Air Arabia flies to more than 25 destinations, including recent additions like Kochi, India; Almaty, Kazakhstan; and Kabul, Afghanistan, and celebrated the achievement of its two-million-passenger milestone this spring. On Web forums like www.airlinequality.com, customers rave about the amount of leg room.
But taking on a staid cultural mindset can be a formidable challenge. For much of the Arab world, the idea of pleasure travel to other countries in the region is fairly new. Political disputes, wearisome visa application procedures and low disposable incomes have traditionally made regional travel difficult for Arabs, something to be undertaken for work and study, or perhaps to visit relatives, but seldom for the sake of tourism alone.
That situation may be changing, analysts say. After 9/11, wealthy gulf Arabs used to vacationing in Europe or the United States began heading to Lebanese and Egyptian beach resorts instead because of a perception that Western countries were growing less hospitable to visitors from the Middle East. Cities like Beirut and Damascus, with their bars and nightclubs and relatively cooler climates, are gaining reputations as summer destinations for visitors from countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Even in poorer Arab countries like Syria, there is a growing class of people with the money and inclination for pleasure travel. The thousands of South Asians who work in the Persian Gulf countries have leapt at cheap daily flights to the subcontinent to make more frequent visits home.
And though it's often outshone by neighboring Dubai or, worse, referred to in travel literature as a bedroom suburb for workers who can't afford high-price rentals in Dubai, Sharjah has quietly been making a name for itself as a family destination, with water parks, wildlife preserves and pleasant beaches  and strict policies against alcohol. According to tourism authorities, hotel occupancy in Sharjah has increased 15 to 20 percent the last year, and government-owned Air Arabia has had a major role in the growth.
David Bender, a graduate student in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University who often travels throughout the Arab world, said that while in Damascus during Ramadan last fall, he had been surprised to see billboards over the Syrian capital's main traffic circles advertising special fares to the United Arab Emirates for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of the Islamic fasting month.
"It's been interesting to see advertisements encouraging people to spend the Eid in Dubai, on vacation; this suggests that there must be a middle class who can afford that kind of thing," Mr. Bender said.
Jyotsna Kaur Habibullah, a spokeswoman for Air Arabia, said that it was not only tapping into an infant market, but also expanding it.
"We are changing the way this region thinks about travel," Ms. Habibullah said. "For the last two and a half years, we've heard this from customers. Many people are telling us that they're able to travel for pleasure for the first time. People who couldn't go on holiday before are now taking holidays for the first time, and people who went on holidays once a year are now taking their families on holiday two or three times a year."
Sami Suleiman, 25, who works for an advertising agency in Dubai, said that when he first heard about Air Arabia from friends two years ago, he started making a list of the cities he wanted to visit.
"It seemed so cheap, so I started thinking, 'Here is my chance to go everywhere, to see all the places I want,' " he said. "I went to Iran. It was only 600 dirhams, very cheap. Sometimes you can fly from Damascus to Dubai for only 200 dirhams."
By industry standards, Air Arabia's fleet is tiny. The airline owns five planes and leases a sixth. Yet these planes are moving constantly, hopscotching among dozens of cities. On a recent flight from Sharjah to Beirut, a flight attendant recognized and warmly greeted a passenger she had met on a flight from Jordan to Sharjah several weeks earlier.
Mr. Suleiman said that Air Arabia's cheap fares have become particularly important to citizens of other Arab countries who have jobs in the Persian Gulf region. Because of their strong economies, the gulf countries are a regional employment hub, drawing workers from all over the Middle East. To Sudanese or Jordanians with long-term contracts in the gulf, Mr. Suleiman said, Air Arabia is a great boon.
"For people who work in the gulf, it's the perfect solution. They can go home to visit their countries maybe three times per year now," he said.
And, Mr. Suleiman added, though Air Arabia, like other low-cost airlines, does not provide meals, "if you're only flying for three hours, you don't care that you have to buy your own snacks." | 
