MANAMA: Passengers will no longer be able to read their Gulf Daily News or sister Arabic paper Akhbar Al Khaleej on Gulf Air flights.

This is the latest in a long line of bans imposed by Gulf Air over the years because our newspapers have upset someone. The last was imposed for nine months, and one, in the early 90s, lasted two years! We were also banned in the '80s following a report about a Gulf Air aircraft that lost one of its front wheels on take off from London. Some suspensions have been based on our reporting of stories that Gulf Air's public relations department decided they did not wish us to publish.

However, this latest 'censorship' move is a mystery. We have been unable to discover what we have allegedly done to upset powers that be although we understand that in this particular case we have managed to upset people involved with the country's sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat, owners of the airline.

We pride ourselves in our professionalism as Bahrain's national newspapers, and will always abide by and aspire to the highest standards of journalism in our reporting.

We look forward to Gulf Air providing us with plausible reasons why it has decided, once again, to ban our newspapers from its aircraft.