Interview: Vipula Gunatilleka, SriLankan Airlines CEO

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In the decade since Sri Lanka’s civil war came to an end, tourism in the island nation has grown fivefold to more than 2.3 million visitors per year.

The sector accounted for 5% of GDP in 2018, almost exactly matching the amount of money that Sri Lanka’s government spends on servicing its foreign debt. With an ambitious target of 5 million visitors in 2021, officials had been hoping that tourism could pull the country out of its budgetary crisis.

That optimism evaporated on Easter Sunday, however, when a team of suicide bombers inspired by Islamic State killed more than 250 people in coordinated attacks on hotels and churches across the island...

British Airways centenary becomes PR nightmare

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British Airways poured money into marketing this year by re-painting four of its planes in heritage liveries and running a series of TV and online advertisements hailing 100 years of flight by the flag carrier.

The campaign – which drafted in celebrities like Olivia Colman – sought to rekindle BA’s historic reputation as “the world’s favorite airline”.

Yet the company seems oblivious of the thing that made it so popular in the past: looking after customers.

Striking pilots are not due to walk off their jobs for another fortnight and BA is already in the doghouse over its chaotic handling of the situation. As well as forcing affected customers to wait for hours on its chronically under-staffed call centers, the airline has spread the misery by wrongly telling other passengers that they need to re-book...

Interview: Neil Sorahan, Ryanair CFO

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Ryanair wants to grow its existing subsidiaries rather than setting up more airlines, though management will not rule out acquisitions if rival carriers fly into difficulty during the winter season.

The Irish company has adopted a multi-brand strategy in recent months by establishing three sister carriers to Ryanair DAC: Austria-based Lauda, Poland-based Buzz and Malta Air. It has also set up a dormant UK subsidiary to minimize brexit-related disruption.

“With the airlines that we have at the moment we've got a huge amount of options,” chief financial officer Neil Sorahan told me...

How bitcoin is taking flight with Norwegian Air

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When Norwegian Air Shuttle launched budget flights to America in 2013, it forced the airline industry to look again at a market segment dismissed by many pundits as commercially fanciful: low-cost long-haul flying.

Six years on, it’s hard to say whether the gamble has paid off. The airline’s balance sheet is weaker than when it only served short-haul markets. Early competitors like WOW Air and Primera Air have collapsed. Yet Norwegian’s Boeing 787 Dreamliners still criss-cross the Atlantic daily – holding their own against a new breed of low-cost long-haul services run by Europe’s legacy carriers.

The decision by Norwegian’s founder, Bjørn Kjos, to relinquish financial and managerial control of the company has meanwhile put a younger generation of executives – including his son, Lars Ola Kjos – in charge of strategic planning.

And their opening gambit appears no less ambitious or transformative than the elder Kjos’s foray into long-haul operations...

Interview: Ahmed Adel, EgyptAir Chairman

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Like any state-owned flag carrier, EgyptAir’s fortunes are tied inexorably to those of its home nation. That has translated to heavy losses and weak demand in recent years as the country was buffeted by successive waves of political and security unrest.

Two devastating air disasters – the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268 and the still unexplained crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 – only added to the airline’s troubles.

However, with improved security and renewed investment under President Abdel Fattah el Sisi, optimism is rising on to the streets of Cairo.

Large-scale projects like the Grand Egyptian Museum and a new high-speed rail network are fuelling hopes of a happier future – one in which both locals and foreigners can travel across this ancient land without fear of violence or persecution...

Interview: Naji Majdalani, Wings of Lebanon CEO

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As a charter carrier with just one aircraft on its registry, Wings of Lebanon rarely gets the media attention that is afforded to larger, better known airlines in the Middle East.

The company has found itself in the spotlight only twice in recent memory – and management would happily forget both instances.

In 2016, a Boeing 737 carrying the Wings name was photographed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. The sighting sparked outrage in a country that officially remains at war with the Jewish state, and whose leaders are deeply paranoid about Israeli intelligence operations.

Then, last year, Wings had its European Union licence suspended after regulators flagged a series of apparent shortcomings in its flight training and aircraft maintenance processes...

How ham-and-cheese paninis are saving Ryanair’s dough

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Few readers of Gulliver will be surprised to hear that Ryanair is the largest low-cost carrier in Europe. Having flown 139m passengers last year, the Irish company is second only to Lufthansa, a group of full-service carriers, in terms of passenger traffic on the continent. At Ryanair’s current rate of expansion, it will almost certainly take the top spot next year. Slightly more surprisingly, the airline has become huge in the catering world as well. “We’re the largest seller of ham-and-cheese paninis in Europe”, claims Neil Sorahan, the airline’s finance director. He likens its food-and-drink sales to putting “the equivalent of 455 7/11s [convenience stores] in the sky every day”...

Interview: Jim Belemu, Mahogany Air CEO

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When Zambia’s late president, Michael Sata, called for Zambia Airways to be resurrected in 2011, local entrepreneur Jim Belemu sensed an opportunity to move into a new sector.

The molecular scientist had already enjoyed a colourful career since obtaining his doctorate, working as a veterinary surgeon, a civil servant, a United Nations researcher and more recently setting up a successful mining company. With metal prices peaking in 2011, he and wife Cynthia were actively searching for their next business venture.

“We decided we needed to do something else which is long-term, maybe not very profitable but at least which keeps us going,” Belemu recalled...

Boeing loses another 737 MAX customer

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Tajikistan’s Somon Air has dropped plans to lease a Boeing 737 MAX, blaming uncertainty about the timeline for its re-entry to service and shattered public confidence in the model.

“The MAX has been put on hold,” chief executive Thomas Hallam told me, referring to a contract for a single leased unit that Air Lease Corporation (ALC) had been due to place with Somon this year.

The unit in question was purchased by the lessor, so the lease cancelation will not affect Boeing's orderbook.

However, it illustrates waning confidence in the MAX following two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that claimed 346 lives and led to a worldwide grounding of the new aircraft type. Boeing is widely perceived to have bungled its response to the crisis by downplaying the severity of problems with its flight control systems and pressuring America’s aviation regulator to keep the model flying even after the second crash...

EgyptAir set for restructuring as questions linger over 2016 crash

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EgyptAir is aiming to reach a 100-strong fleet under a new plan led by chairman and chief executive Ahmed Adel, but the flag carrier appears no closer to explaining the loss of one of its planes in the Mediterranean Sea three years ago.

Speaking to me in Seoul, South Korea earlier this month, Adel said EgyptAir has finally “levelled off” after a series of political and security crises in its home nation. Tourism in the country was decimated by the 2011 revolution against President Hosni Mubarak and has struggled to recover in recent years, hampered by a military coup, the terrorist bombing of a Russian charter jet in Sinai, and the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804.

With Islamic State in decline across the region and Egypt’s government delivering stability at home, the flag carrier is now embarking on a “complete restructuring plan” aimed at returning to growth – albeit while providing few answers about the May 2016 disaster that claimed 66 lives...