Last laugh for WOW Air as Indigo swoops, Icelandair fumbles

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“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” was almost certainly the rationale behind Icelandair’s now-canceled decision to take over WOW Air this month.

The Icelandic flag-carrier has steadily lost market share since its lower-cost, more nimble, better marketed rival took to the skies in 2012 – copying its intercontinental hub model but with greater efficiencies and a stronger brand.

When Icelandair walked away from the deal yesterday – essentially hinting that WOW’s financial problems were terminal – pundits sounded a death knell for the younger carrier. WOW’s founder, Skuli Mogensen, had been candid that his airline was struggling amid high oil prices and market jitters over the collapse of Primera Air, another low-cost long-haul airline. Joining forces with a flag-carrier he had publicly berated for years appeared to be a final, grudging throw of the dice...

British Airways should not be allowed to buy Flybe

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Within days of putting itself up for sale, Flybe, a beleaguered regional airline based in Britain, has attracted interest from the country’s two largest carriers. Its executives are hoping for a bidding war between International Airlines Group (IAG), which is the parent company of British Airways (BA), Britain’s flag carrier, and Virgin Atlantic, its main rival. Flybe’s shares have surged in value due to the tussle. But only one of the bids would be good for the travelling public...

Flybe is in urgent need of a new strategy

Full article on economist.com

Despite plying European skies for nearly four decades, Flybe, a regional airline based in Exeter, Britain, has never suffered a major safety-related incident. Its pilots and technicians deserve much praise for this stellar safety record. Sadly, investors in the airline have not been looked after nearly as well. Those who bought shares in the firm when it listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2010 and still have them are nursing a massive 97% loss in value. Recent profit warnings have compelled Flybe’s board to put it up for sale–nine months after spurning a takeover attempt...

How Syria’s flag carrier plans to remain airborne

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About a decade ago Syrian Arab Airlines, the state-owned flag carrier of Syria, was planning an order for 50 shiny new Airbus jetliners. They never arrived. Today it operates five elderly ones. The country’s ability to expand its civilian fleet with Western aircraft stumbled when President Bashar al-Assad took the reins from his father in 2000. It disintegrated 13 years later, when civil war swept across Syria and Mr Assad shocked the world with his indiscriminate military tactics, including the use of chemical weapons against civilians. With a helping hand from Russia, his brutal methods have succeeded. His troops now control about 85% of Syrian territory. And SyrianAir is once again shopping for planes—albeit, this time, in Moscow...

Syphax back from the dead

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Mohamed Frikha could not have picked a worse time to establish his airline than 2011, the year in which Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in a popular revolt that served as the spark for the Arab Spring uprisings.

Although it seemed like a period of renewal and change in Tunisia – and, indeed, the North African country has fared much better than its neighbours in the years that have followed – fortune was not smiling on Syphax.

Flag-carrier Tunisair threw down the first hurdle by instructing its ground-handling division to block its rival’s very first flight. Then airspace in Libya – a vital market for any Tunisian airline – was shut down as that country spiralled into civil war. Soon after, a pair of Daesh terror attacks targeting holidaymakers in Tunis and Sousse decimated tourism demand in Tunisia. And finally, technical problems with the airline’s Airbus A330 grounded its only long-haul route to Montreal.

“We did not have luck,” Frikha shrugs...

Interview: Nevzat Arşan, AtlasGlobal CCO

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AtlasGlobal’s chairman, Murat Ersoy, turned heads last year when he pledged to create an alliance of nine different airlines spread across the world.

The Turkish carrier’s appetite for overseas subsidiaries was not by itself surprising. The company rebranded from AtlasJet in 2015 to underline its global aspirations, and it already holds shares in three such ventures: AtlasGlobal Ukraine, Iraq’s ZagrosJet and Kazakhstan’s Jet One.

But the scale of the plan – and its focus on protected markets like Saudi Arabia and Russia – shocked many, particularly given the difficulties that Ersoy has encountered with his existing subsidiaries...

A brand new passenger jet crashes in Indonesia

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On October 29th a Boeing 737 MAX 8 airliner, one of the newest and most technologically advanced passenger planes in the world, crashed into the Java Sea shortly after leaving Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. If, as is feared, none of the 189 passengers and crew aboard Lion Air Flight 610 survived, the crash will become the second deadliest in Indonesia’s history. It is also the first involving a MAX aircraft, which only entered service last year. Speculating on the causes at this early stage is both unhelpful to investigators and disrespectful to victims. Most aircraft losses stem from a web of technical, environmental and human factors, the nuances of which take months to unearth. But, as they get to work, investigators will inevitably have Indonesia’s poor air-safety record at the front of their minds...

Primed for failure

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Primera Air changed its low-cost business model this year by adding scheduled long-haul flights to its predominantly short-haul charter network. Hrafn Thorgeirsson, its chief executive, had said that the change was necessary to avoid the structural decline of the European market for charter flights. He could have saved himself the bother. The airline entered administration on October 2nd after failing to secure further funding for its loss-making long-haul operation, which was beset by delays and cancellations during its first and only summer season. Its collapse leaves thousands of customers stranded and tens of thousands more out of pocket...

Ethiopian Airlines is founding new African flag carriers

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When The Economist wrote about Ethiopian Airlines in 1989, we praised the company’s “unqualified success” despite operating in a “disastrous economy” infected with civil war, famine and Marxist inefficiency. Having grown its passenger count 17-fold since then–to the benefit, not the detriment, of its profits–Ethiopian is now the envy of all African governments. Most are saddled with loss-making flag-carriers or none at all. Tewolde GebreMariam, Ethiopian’s boss, wants to change this by helping some of his neighbours set up new companies and others overhaul existing ones. But while his intentions are good, he cannot fix the broken sector alone...

Interview: Thomas Hallam, Somon Air CEO

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Tajikistan’s Somon Air launched operations in 2008 with the aim of breaking the monopoly enjoyed by state-owned flag-carrier Tajik Air.

Chief executive Thomas Hallam makes no bones about the challenges of running a business in Tajikistan – an impoverished central Asian republic where corruption and cronyism still dominate the corporate landscape.

But by learning from the success of Air Astana, Kazakhstan’s flag-carrier, Somon Air is rapidly overcoming these obstacles. An obsessive focus on safety, transparency and international standards has secured the company both IATA membership and TCO (Third Country Operator) authorisation in Europe – two recognised benchmarks for operational excellence...

Back to the Silk Road

Full article in JPG format: page 121, page 122 & page 124

Distilling complex economic strategies into straightforward, digestible terms is never an easy task, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is no exception.

Originally launched in 2013 as the One Belt One Road Initiative, Beijing renamed its pet-project two years ago following confusion about the use of the singular word “one”. In fact, the BRI encompasses an array of land and maritime trade routes that collectively bind together the economies of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Many of the BRI’s land corridors overlap with the ancient Silk Road networks that allowed traders to move their goods from East to West for more than a thousand years. But there are new pathways too – in regions once skirted by the cart-pulling camels and horses – and there is even now a “Digital Belt and Road” that focuses on e-commerce and scientific cooperation.

Put simply, the BRI means whatever the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping wants it to mean – and its definition and scope changes year by year...

Ryanair: Not so nice now

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For the second time in a year, Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost carrier, is changing the way it charges for baggage. Until 2018 Ryanair had allowed passengers to carry one small bag and one wheelie bag in the cabin for free. It changed its policy in January—purportedly to speed up boarding—by making passengers dump their wheelie bags on the tarmac so ground staff could chuck them in the hold at the last minute. Under the latest rules, effective from November, wheelie bags will attract a fee no matter how they are transported: £6 ($7.80) in the cabin or £8 in the hold. For an airline whose customers often pay £10 or less for a ticket, the change is dramatic...

A suicidal airline employee shows mercy

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The skies above Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were closed on August 10th after an airline employee stole an empty 76-seat plane and performed death-defying aerial acrobatics before crashing the turboprop onto a small island. That no-one but the pilot himself was killed had nothing to do with intervention by the military, the airport, the airline or air-traffic controllers. It had everything to do with the relatively benign intentions of the employee, who appears not to have been a trained pilot and refused to attempt a runway landing for fear he might cause ground casualties...

Interview: Abdulaziz Al Raisi, Oman Air CEO

Full article in PDF format: page 19-22 & cover

Like the Gulf super-connectors, Oman Air carries more than two-thirds of its passengers on transfer flights over its hub. This sixth-freedom model allows the flag-carrier to surpass the limitations of its home market, unlocking routes and frequencies that could never be sustained by Oman’s population of just 4.8 million.

Unlike its better-known neighbours in the UAE and Qatar, however, the Muscat-based airline is now rolling back its reliance on transfer traffic.

New chief executive Abdulaziz Al Raisi is targeting a 50/50 split between connecting flows and point-to-point flows within a couple of years, and he wants to achieve this even as Oman Air accelerates the growth of its fleet and network.

“With sixth-freedom traffic you are going into competition with a lot of giant airlines, big players. It’s very hard for us as a small airline to survive in that market,” Al Raisi explained...

Interview: Mehmet Nane, Pegasus CEO

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Pegasus Airlines strengthened its recovery in the first quarter of this year, lifting passenger numbers by 18% as holidaymakers in Western Europe and Russia rekindled their love affair with Turkish resorts.

The positive result comes just two years after the low-cost carrier sunk to a rare loss amid a perfect storm of Daesh terror attacks, a failed military coup and a diplomatic row with Russia. Fears of a lengthy downturn were dispelled by last year’s profit, and with demand still growing chief executive Mehmet Nane is in bullish mood about the airline’s prospects.

Despite his newfound optimism, however, the challenges facing developing nations in general and Turkey in particular loom large at Pegasus...

Zimbabwe Airways crash lands

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The delivery of a 13-year-old Boeing 777-200ER to Zimbabwe has ignited a row over corruption and alleged misappropriation of funds in the final days of former president Robert Mugabe’s rule.

Government officials welcomed the new aircraft – the first of four purchased from Malaysia Airlines – at a ceremony at Harare’s Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport on 11 April. The plane is painted in the colours of a new airline, Zimbabwe Airways, which aims to restore long-haul connections formerly served by Air Zimbabwe, the chronically mismanaged state-owned flag-carrier.

Yet, without even taking to the skies, Zimbabwe Airways is already courting the same controversy that dogged Air Zimbabwe during Mugabe’s time in office. Transparency is by far the biggest concern...

Kyrgyzstan's Air Manas targets Beijing route launch

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Air Manas is seeking permission to launch passenger flights between the capitals of Kyrgyzstan and China.

“We can fly to Beijing. We are looking for the opportunities for that and for the permits,” confirmed Mehmet Nane, chief executive of Pegasus Airlines, the Turkish low-cost carrier that owns 49% of Air Manas.

Nane told me that demand on the Bishkek-Beijing leg will benefit from Pegasus’s existing Istanbul-Bishkek service – effectively turning the Kyrgyz capital into a sixth-freedom base for Turkey-China traffic.

“When you look at Kyrgyzstan on the map it’s the center of Asia," he noted...

Somon Air delays Dreamliner in favor of 767, confirms E2 plan

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Tajikistan’s Somon Air has delayed its planned introduction of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner until around 2022, with management now seeking a 767-300ER and stepping up their focus on regional expansion with Embraer E190-E2s.

“The Dreamliner is still in our strategic plan, but the one that was announced is not going to materialize,” chief executive Thomas Hallam told me during an interview at Somon Air’s headquarters in Dushanbe, the capital of the central Asian nation. “Our timeline is now somewhere around 2022. What we need to do is to look at our core business before we look at our trans-continental business.”

Somon Air signed an MoU for one 787-8 at last year’s Dubai Air Show, with the aircraft originally expected to arrive in early 2018. The opportunity to jump Boeing’s delivery queue arose when Royal Jordanian Airlines cut back its Dreamliner commitment.

Although the wide-body was offered at a “very attractive price”, Hallam said Somon Air needs to be “realistic about economies of scale” as it pursues sustainable growth...

Southend calling: Ryanair admits Brexit hasn't soured it on Britain

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Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost carrier, has sounded a resounding note of optimism about the UK aviation market by opening a new base at London Southend Airport – just one year after warning that Brexit would spell the end of cheap flights for Brits.

The airline says it will base three aircraft at the Essex airport in April 2019, days after the UK formally withdraws from the European Union.

Its expansion marks a dramatic climb-down by Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, who campaigned heavily against Brexit before the referendum and then threatened to ground flights when the vote didn’t go his way. "I think it's in our interests … that the aircraft are grounded,” he said in March, predicting that UK travelers will “re-think the whole Brexit debate” once they realize they are “no longer going to have cheap holidays in Portugal or Spain or Italy”.

Eight of Ryanair’s 13 new Southend routes are bound for Portugal, Spain or Italy. They will join the roughly 5,400 flights per month that the airline operates from the UK to the three countries...

A misogynist cannot promote gender equality in aviation

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The International Air Transport Association (IATA) was founded in 1945 to unify and promote the interests of airlines around the world. At this week’s AGM in Sydney, despite efforts to the contrary by some, IATA’s message was as dated as the organisation itself: women are too dense to run airlines. Akbar al Baker, the group’s new chairman and the boss of Qatar Airways, a Persian Gulf carrier, told attendees that “of course”, his airline “has to be led by a man, because it is a very challenging position”. He later apologised for what he claimed was a joke blown out of proportion by the media. Yet this was not Mr al Baker’s first foray into misogyny: last year he mocked American carriers for hiring “grandmothers” as flight attendants, boasting that the average age of his cabin crew is 26 years. Until recently, he forbade female staff from marrying or getting pregnant...

Why airliners in Cuba and Iran crash so much

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When the dream of a smooth flight turns into the nightmare of an airliner crash, understanding what went wrong is sometimes straightforward. That was the case with a Malaysia Airlines flight which crashed in the summer of 2014, killing 298. This week Dutch and Australian investigators conclusively showed that it was shot down by a missile fired by Russian armed forces. But in other cases it is much harder to apportion blame. Such is the complexity of civil aviation that investigators spend years sifting through wreckage, recordings and data logs to work out what went wrong. Often technological, human and environmental faults are the main culprits. Yet another factor can be argued to have caused many of the world’s deadliest air disasters so far this year: economic sanctions...

Zimbabwe Airways: Flights of fancy

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Having one loss-making state-owned airline is bad enough. What, then, of a government that wants two?

Earlier this year Zimbabweans were startled to learn that the government had concluded a secret $70m deal to buy four second-hand Boeing jets from Malaysia to form the core of a new national airline, Zimbabwe Airways. This venture is supposed to compete with Air Zimbabwe, the flag carrier, which ran up huge debts thanks to poor management and ex-President Robert Mugabe’s habit of commandeering its planes so his wife could shop abroad...

Interview: Jann Tamm, Nordica CEO

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When Estonian Air was ordered by the European Commission to pay back more than €85 million of illegal state aid in November 2015, its government owner was immediately resigned to the need to shut down the underperforming flag-carrier.

Had the Commission ruled differently, Tallink, Estonia’s main ferry operator, was waiting in the wings as an investor. But there was no prospect of privatising the airline once the EU had saddled it with such huge debts.

Fortunately for Estonian travellers, the government anticipated the ruling and had already set up a new flag-carrier by the time of the Commission’s decision. This contingency planning allowed the new company, Nordic Aviation Group, to launch operations on the very same day that Estonian Air was grounded – initially as a virtual airline under contract with Slovenia’s Adria Airways.

It has taken just two years for the new flag-carrier, operating as Nordica, to become an independent company with its own Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC), a fleet of 18 aircraft and a positive financial outlook...

Interview: Krešimir Kučko, Gulf Air CEO

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Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel may have emerged victorious from the Bahrain Grand Prix in April, but for many spectators the star of the show was nowhere to be seen on the Formula One track.

Before the race even got under way, Gulf Air, Bahrain’s flag-carrier, had stolen the limelight with a flyover by its first Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner – a brand new aircraft type for the kingdom and an emblem of the ambitious plan being led by chief executive Krešimir Kučko, who was appointed last year with a mandate to revitalise the airline’s long-waning influence in the region...

Interview: Bilal Ekşi, Turkish Airlines CEO

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Bilal Ekşi knew he was in for a rough ride when he took on the role of Turkish Airlines (THY) chief executive in October 2016.

His predecessor, Temel Kotil, had won countless accolades during his time in office, presiding over a decade of rapid expansion and rising prestige for the super-connector airline. By the time of Kotil’s departure, however, events were conspiring against both the flag-carrier and its home nation.

A failed coup d'état, a wave of terror attacks by Daesh, and a regional slowdown in demand were setting the scene for THY’s first annual loss in recent memory...

The great foreign exchange rip-off is coming to an end

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Some years ago, when Gulliver was a wide-eyed reporter on his first business trip, he sidled up to a bureau de change in London’s Heathrow Airport to buy some foreign currency. His nervous excitement quickly turned to dismay when the teller gouged 12% from the transaction, justifying the theft by tapping on a display-screen of ruinous exchange rates. Today, Gulliver knows better than to buy foreign currency at an airport. But many do not: in 2016 Heathrow raked in £50m ($68m) by renting retail space to bureaux de change. New technology and startups could soon change that...

Widerøe pins future of social routes on electric plane breakthrough

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Widerøe is banking on the launch of an all-electric, sub 50-seat aircraft by the end of the next decade in order to maintain its deep footprint in the domestic Norwegian market.

“I really believe that we will have a major technology shift in this turboprop segment, and I think, in fact, there could be a possibility for flying all-electric … in the timeframe around 2030,” Stein Nilsen, Widerøe chief executive, told me last week during the ferry flight of the airline’s new Embraer E190 E2 from Aberdeen to Bergen.

Nilsen was responding to a question about Widerøe's 25 Bombardier Dash 8 Q100s and Q200s – small turboprops with 39 seats that the airline mostly deploys on Public Service Obligation (PSO) routes within Norway...

Gulf Air tries to reclaim its crown

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With their geographical advantage for connecting flights between far-flung places, there is plenty to keep the airlines of the Gulf countries busy. Yet Bahrain’s skies are nearly empty compared with its neighbours. About 9m passengers used its airport last year, far fewer than the 88m for Dubai, 37m for Qatar and 26m for Abu Dhabi. The difference is striking given that Gulf Air, Bahrain’s flag carrier, was for decades the most prestigious airline in the Middle East. In its heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s, none of its three neighbours even had national airlines...

Estonia's Nordica plans new EU bases as export model takes off

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Estonian airline Nordica is talking to about ten potential customers for its contract flying services and could open up to three new bases in the coming winter season, chief executive Jaan Tamm has told me.

The Baltic flag-carrier supplements its scheduled network out of Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, with various kinds of ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) contracts for foreign customers. Nearly two-thirds of the flights conducted by Regional Jet, its operating subsidiary, are flown under these export arrangements...

Interview: Bakhouche Alleche, Air Algerie CEO

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Algeria’s Transport Ministry denied rumours that Air Algérie is heading for bankruptcy in January, insisting that the flag-carrier enjoys the full support of the government despite its “difficult financial situation”.

The intervention followed a series of walkouts by employees, who are angry at new chief executive Bakhouche Alleche for freezing planned wage increases. Those pay-hikes had reportedly been agreed by Mohamed Bouderbala, Air Algérie’s previous boss, but were axed as part of a newly launched turnaround plan.

Speaking to African Aerospace shortly before the strikes, the airline’s top management insisted that boosting on-time-performance (OTP) should be a higher priority than lifting an already burdensome wage bill...

Why posting a 'very large loss' is a good sign for Qatar Airways

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Never one to mince his words, Akbar Al Baker, the chief executive of Qatar Airways, has been more than candid about the “very large loss” that he expects his company to announce for the 2017-18 financial year. Qatar’s flag-carrier agreed in January to start putting detailed financial statements in the public domain – a move designed to ease concerns about unfair state support and minimize the likelihood of America curbing its access to the U.S. market.

The expected loss will mark a dramatic reversal of recent claims of profitability. For 2016-17, Qatar Airways had announced net profits of 1.97 billion Qatari riyals ($541m) in filings audited by Ernst & Young’s local branch in Qatar. The previous year’s audited report put its takings at 1.62 billion riyals, while an informal figure of $103 million was given by Al Baker for 2014-15.

As I wrote previously in relation to Etihad Airways – another state-owned Gulf carrier with delusions of profitability – such claims are misleading and should not have been repeated by media outlets without strong disclaimers...

Ukraine convinces Ryanair to return

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Almost one year ago to the day, Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost carrier, announced plans to begin serving Ukraine, its largest country. Ukraine had been a glaring white spot in the airline’s route network, deliberately avoided because of the anti-competitive advantages afforded to Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), the flag-carrier. A new infrastructure minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, brokered the deal between Ryanair and Boryspil Airport, the capital’s main gateway and home base of UIA. But it collapsed within months. Now, Ryanair, the government and the airport are trying again...

Come fly with Xi

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In ancient times, traders on the Silk Road connecting China with Europe rarely ventured into the northern Caucasus region that is now home to Georgia. Diverting from established routes through Armenia and Anatolia to the south served little purpose unless conflict made the trackways impassable. Today, advances in transport and logistics mean that geography is less of a hurdle for traders. But friendly relations are just as important. Having signed free trade agreements with China and the European Union, Georgia is keen to pitch itself as a trade-and-transport hub for President Xi Jinping of China’s One Belt One Road initiative...

Georgia's MyWay Airlines plans intercontinental hub in Tbilisi

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The tiny Caucasian country of Georgia could become a hub for intercontinental transfer traffic if Chinese-owned MyWay Airlines fulfils its five-year business plan.

Igor Aptsiauri, the start-up’s commercial director, says capital city Tbilisi has geographical potential for linking up flights between Asia and Europe, but is held back by the modest ambitions of flag-carrier Georgian Airways – currently the only local carrier with scheduled passenger flights.

“One of our biggest strategies that we have right now is we want to develop Georgia and Tbilisi Airport … further as a hub connecting Europe and Asia,” he told me...

Ukraine's aviation fiasco

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Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 opened a dark chapter in the history of Ukraine’s civil aviation sector, lighting a fuse that would see Donetsk International Airport razed to the ground and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot out of the sky. Though hostilities rumble on in the eastern Donbas region, life has gradually returned to normal for most Ukrainians. The number of passengers carried by local airlines grew 22 per cent in 2016 to reach 5.7 million – just shy of pre-conflict levels – thanks in large part to flag-carrier Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), which has stepped up its role as a transit carrier linking Asia with Europe. Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport, UIA’s home base, accommodated more than ten million passengers last year and expects 20 million by 2023.

However, market dominance by UIA – which provides 67 per cent of capacity at Boryspil, and a whopping 89 per cent of domestic seats nationwide – is antagonising Ukraine’s pro-western government, whose lawmakers are desperate to inject foreign competition and disempower the post-Soviet oligarchs...

How to ensure Ryanair foots the bill for flight delays

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There is little doubt that Ryanair takes umbrage at EU261, the piece of European law that guarantees passengers compensation in the event of most flight delays and cancellations. Michael O’Leary, the airline’s boss, insists that he complies with the “ridiculous” piece of legislation. But many say otherwise. Last year, when a pilot rostering mishap grounded thousands of Ryanair flights, the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) accused it of “persistently misleading” customers about their rights. Which?, a British consumer group, agreed that Ryanair fell “woefully short” of its obligations. Media reports exposing poor treatment of passengers abound. Yet, in the past five months, your correspondent has received two EU261 pay-outs from Ryanair. Claims that the company swindles its customers are exaggerated...

Interview: Stefan Pichler, Royal Jordanian Airlines CEO

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When Royal Jordanian Airlines ran a series of advertisements mocking Donald Trump, the US President, and making light of his laptop ban for Middle Eastern flights, many of the people sharing its messages on social media had never even heard of the airline – let alone flown with it.

Despite flying its country’s flag for more than half a century, Royal Jordanian still lacks the scale and brand recognition of its Gulf competitors. It has also become a financial burden on the government of Jordan, its 26% shareholder, posting net losses in four of the six years since the Arab Spring.

New chief executive Stefan Pichler admits that regional instability has held the airline back. Neighbouring Syria used to be a major source of connecting traffic before civil war closed its skies, while routes to Iraq, Libya and Yemen were also abandoned when violence flared in their borders. Surrounded by conflict, Jordan’s own tourism sector has nosedived as Westerners steer clear of what they perceive to be a dangerous neighbourhood...

Interview: Ilyes Mnakbi, Tunisair CEO

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The European Union’s delegation to Tunisia could not have struck a more optimistic tone in December, when EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc met with officials in Tunis to conclude negotiations over the looming Open Skies treaty between the two sides.

Tunisia’s government has been inching towards the treaty for several years, emboldened by the success of Morocco’s deal with the EU in 2006. That landmark agreement saw tourist arrivals rocketing by 60% over five years, propelled by an influx of European low-cost carriers to the country’s popular holiday resorts. Tunisia’s treaty, Bulc predicted, will be no less transformative...

Bridging the Gulf

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When SaudiGulf Airlines applied for an operating licence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012, owners Al Qahtani Group believed that a winning bid would grant them access to a heavily under-served duopolistic market.

By the end of the year, it was clear that SaudiGulf would not be the only company emerging from the tender process with flying rights. Al Maha Airways, a subsidiary of Qatar Airways, was also approved to launch operations. And while its plans ultimately came to naught, two other market entrants were waiting in the wings: Nesma Airlines, a regional carrier formerly based in Egypt; and Flyadeal, a low-cost subsidiary of flag-carrier Saudia.

Together with privately-owned Flynas, five separate carriers now ply routes across the kingdom. Though fantastic for passengers, this explosion of competition has left SaudiGulf re-evaluating a business model that presupposed rapid growth and untapped demand...

Legacy airlines are facing new competitors on transatlantic routes

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Even for a global industry like aviation, Primera Air’s business model seems remarkably cosmopolitan. The Icelandic-owned airline is headquartered in Latvia, but mainly operates flights from Denmark and Sweden to sunspots in the Mediterranean. This summer, it will begin flying from the UK and France to America. The company bears more than a passing resemblance to Norwegian Air Shuttle, another nominally Scandinavian airline with global aspirations. More than two-thirds of Norwegian’s capacity now bypasses its home country, and the rapid growth of its long-haul operations is proving to be a serious challenge for legacy carriers such as British Airways...

Turkish Airlines: Flying to the moon

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A little over a year ago, Gulliver gave a downbeat assessment of the prospects for Turkey's aviation sector. Having enjoyed a decade of uninterrupted growth of more than 10% a year, Turkish Airlines, the country’s flag-carrier, was grounding aircraft and closing routes amid growing unrest at home and violence across its border with Syria. Concerns about regional security were also making life difficult in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, two other countries that have built aviation empires by connecting far-flung parts of the globe through their hub airports. Yet whereas the Gulf carriers remain in the doldrums, Turkish is gaining altitude again...

Interview: Adel Ali, Air Arabia CEO

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Compared with Europe, few people would describe the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as a liberal aviation market. Restrictive traffic rights, bureaucratic visa regulations and state aid for flag-carriers conspire to make life immensely difficult for the few private airlines based in the region.

Heavy regulation is particularly burdensome for low-cost carriers (LCCs) as they rely on commercial efficiency and free-market access to unlock new demand among price-sensitive consumers. This explains why most Arab LCCs adopt a hybrid business model that eschews point-to-point flying in favour of hub economics, and replaces no-frills service with a whole host of complimentary perks. Airfares, inevitably, remain higher than average.

The one noteworthy exception is Air Arabia, the privatised flag-carrier of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which was founded in 2003 and now operates 48 Airbus A320s out of ten bases stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Maghreb...

Interview: Hrafn Thorgeirsson, Primera Air CEO

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Amid a recent flurry of activity in the low-cost long-haul sector, one new operator stands out as relatively unknown on both sides of the Atlantic.

Primera Air stormed onto the scene last year by announcing plans to fly from London Stansted, Birmingham and Paris Charles de Gaulle airports to New York, Boston and Toronto – a radical departure from its short-haul charter specialism.

The company has an eclectic history that defies easy classification. Having started life as an Icelandic airline, JetX, it was acquired by and renamed after Primera Travel Group, a conglomerate of Scandinavian travel agencies and tour operators. Newly formed Primera Air then ditched its Icelandic identity, first by acquiring a Danish operating licence and then another in Latvia...

Pegasus gallops back to profit

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By the time Turkey had suppressed the military coup d'état of July 2016, it was clear that tough times lay ahead for the country’s aviation sector.

A series of high-profile terror attacks – including one devastating assault on Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport – had already shattered Turkey’s appeal as a tourism hotspot and intercontinental aviation hub. Political unrest only looked set to damage its reputation further.

With flag-carrier Turkish Airlines and low-cost rival Pegasus Airlines both posting operating losses for the year – their first in recent memory – concerns grew that Turkey’s era of double-digit passenger growth was grinding to a halt. The subsequent election of US President Donald Trump and the imposition of his laptop ban on Turkish and Middle Eastern carriers made 2017 appear no less ominous.

Yet, despite battling headwinds on multiple fronts, the two network carriers rebooted their growth plans last year after bouncing back into profit. Amid a vastly improved security climate and a better-than-expected recovery in outbound demand, Turkey’s aviation sector now looks stronger than ever...