Gulf Air is on a flight-path to success despite the resignation of president and chief executive Andre Dose, it declared yesterday. The recovery plan Dose helped draw up is already paying off and the airline will continue with the programme.

Chairman Mahmood Al Kooheji said Dose's departure was a result of a clash of styles, but there was no animosity.

The 50-year-old resigned on Sunday, just four months into the job - forcing Gulf Air to look for a new chief executive for third time in less than a year.

Chief operating officer Bjorn Naf, a fellow Swiss, slips into the caretaker's seat as acting president and chief executive - a decision announced on Tuesday but sealed with a Press conference yesterday at the Gulf Air flight simulator centre.

Dose left because he could not get used to the Bahraini way of doing business, Al Kooheji told the Press.

He said Dose had wanted to work faster than Bahraini legislative constraints allow. "In terms of our previous president, I think the issue was the environment in which we work in Bahrain," said Al Kooheji.

"In Bahrain we are very open about the fact that it is a modest operation. Maybe in business you need to take a lot of decisions very quickly and very promptly, but if you are a public company you have to adhere to a lot of rules and obligations, whether they are good or bad.

"We believe they are good, we believe they add transparency. It is a personal sort of style of working. Some people are comfortable working in a certain environment and some people are not able to work in that environment.

"We have to work with parliament, we have other legislative people that we need to answer to and we need to accommodate."

This difference in management style was the reason for Dose's exit, rather than any major disagreement on how the airline's 'Making Gulf Air Well' recovery plan should be implemented, said Al Kooheji. "That is the reason - there was no difference of opinion regarding the programme," he said.

"Even if you talk to the previous president and chief executive, he will tell you that he believes in this programme - it is a good programme, nobody ever disputed that, we are all committed to that.

"So it's just the style of working. It is the environment that we are in."

Al Kooheji later dismissed the idea that there were underlying problems in the relationship between the board and Dose which caused the rift.

"I don't think the problem was between the board and Dose. The new Gulf Air is a 100 per cent Bahrain-owned company and we will soon be subject to a tender law and the audit bureau of Bahrain," he said.

"Those sort of laws that are in Bahrain require us to adhere to a certain process and be very transparent in our business.

"The previous PCE's opinion was we are restructuring and we need to do things in a fast-track way and bypass these. Our opinion is no - we need to do it by the book, even if it is a little bit slower.

"I think transparency is always good. We want to be in compliance with the law to the fullest that we can be."

There was no personal animosity, said Al Kooheji.

"Personally there was no dispute with him - things ended on a very friendly note. Even before his departure he gave very good words of encouragement to the management team, asking them to continue the programme," he said.

"I personally have very high regard for him - he is a very professional person and we left on friendly terms. He said if we want to contact him or get his opinion on things he is happy and willing to help us - so he is departing, but his heart is still with us."

Naf takes over temporarily after impressing the Gulf Air board of directors with his efforts as he led the introduction of a new, "passenger-friendly" schedule, launched on July 1. The new schedule has dramatically cut the number of flight cancellations and improve