Last laugh for WOW Air as Indigo swoops, Icelandair fumbles

Full article on forbes.com

“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

Full article on economist.com

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

Full article on economist.com

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...