Arab-Jewish tensions spill over on Aegean flight

Full article on economist.com

It started with a flickering of paranoia in the mind of one Jewish passenger; perhaps justifiable, given the recent surge of terrorist attacks in Israel; perhaps prejudicial, emblematic of the deep distrust between Arabs and Jews, who both see a homeland in the Holy Land. It ended with two entirely innocent customers being hauled off a commercial flight, and with senior Palestinian officials accusing their Greek counterparts of reviving "the worst years of the South African apartheid". The debacle unfolded on a routine Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Tel Aviv...

Etihad's backdoor access to Europe slammed shut

Full article on forbes.com

It is a strategy that has won James Hogan, the chief executive of Etihad Airways, plaudits from the across the airline industry.

Shackled by restrictive traffic-rights agreements, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad has in recent years gone on a shopping spree across Europe. Equity stakes in Alitalia (49%), Air Serbia (49%), Switzerland’s Darwin Airline (33%) and Germany’s Air Berlin (29%) have allowed the Gulf carrier to pursue backdoor expansion across the continent, swapping traffic with local partners and restructuring their networks to feed Abu Dhabi.

The investment model has narrowed the gap between Etihad and its two older, larger Gulf rivals – Dubai’s Emirates Airline and Qatar Airways – contributing an estimated $1.1 billion to the newcomer’s top line in 2014...

Winds of change at Saudia

Full article in PDF format

Discussions about Gulf aviation invariably focus on the so-called 'big three' carriers in the region: Dubai's Emirates Airline, Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways. Saudia, the flag-carrier of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, rarely gets a mention – despite deploying more aircraft than Etihad, and boasting a history that stretches back decades before the launch of the new breed of Gulf super-connectors.

Saudia's absence from the global limelight is partly down to its focus on domestic flying, with two-thirds of the airline's seating capacity deployed inside the kingdom. It is also a reflection of the conservative values of its government owner. The big three Gulf carriers, by contrast, have designed their businesses around intercontinental transfer traffic, forcing them to invest heavily in global marketing campaigns and high-profile sponsorship deals. Saudia neither wants nor needs to make as much noise...

Open skies still up in the air

Full article in PDF format

"The African Union is as old as the European Union. The European Union has achieved a lot, and the African Union has not achieved as much." So said Tewolde GebreMariam, chief executive of Ethiopian Airlines, during the annual meeting of the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) in Congo Brazzaville in November.

GebreMariam has earned the right to pass judgement. Since taking the reins at Ethiopia's flag-carrier in 2011, he has continued and expanded the ambitious growth strategy designed by Girma Wake, his illustrious predecessor, who laid the groundwork for Addis Ababa to become the continent's pre-eminent aviation hub. Today, the only thing growing faster than Ethiopian Airlines' fleet is its bottom line – net profits have quadrupled over the past four years.

Elsewhere on the continent, however, aviation success stories are few and far between. The African Union must accept some of the blame...

Don't blame Kuwait Airways for discrimination against Israelis

Full article on forbes.com

Kuwait Airways has suspended flights between New York’s JFK Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport after the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) took umbrage at its longstanding policy of turning away Israeli passport-holders. The flag-carrier will still fly nonstop between New York and Kuwait – and will continue refusing Israelis on that service – but it has been forced to abandon connecting flights via the U.K. capital. The decision amounts to a legal victory for Eldad Gatt, an Israeli citizen who filed a discrimination complaint with the DoT in 2013 after being refused a ticket for the New York-London route...

Heathrow third runway: How democracy is killing the world's busiest hub

Full article on forbes.com

Have you spotted the problem with my headline? London’s Heathrow Airport is no longer the world’s busiest hub for international traffic. Dubai International Airport (DXB) stole that title last year, handling 70 million passengers compared with Heathrow’s 68 million. DXB will eventually be replaced by an even larger Gulf mega-hub, Dubai South, with an annual capacity of 250 million people. Further East, China will have constructed 58 new airports by the end of the decade. Even North Korea opened a new one this year. In totalitarian societies, it seems, airport infrastructure projects are all the rage...

Interview: József Váradi, Wizz Air CEO

Full article in PDF format: page 38-41 & cover

József Váradi, the founder and chief executive of Wizz Air, coined a new term for the aviation industry at last year's World Travel Market in London: "lazy low-cost".

His neologism drew a line between two types of low-cost carriers (LCCs): on the one hand, true LCCs that have an obsessive focus on cost-cutting and ancillary surcharges; on the other, "lazy" LCCs that allow legacy expenses to creep into their business models.

"Only Wizz and Ryanair are [true] low-cost," he told delegates at the industry conference. "The likes of EasyJet and Norwegian [Air Shuttle], we would call them 'lazy low-cost'."

Fast forward to this summer's World Low Cost Airlines Congress in London, and Váradi took to the stage in a more nuanced environment for the fast-paced LCC sector...

Made in the USA... by Airbus

Full article in PDF format

At some point in the middle of 2016, for the first time in history, an Airbus aircraft will roll off the production line on American soil.

JetBlue Airways is lined up to receive the first of the US-made jets, followed later in the year by American Airlines. Both carriers have ordered A321s, though Airbus's new $600 million facility in Mobile, Alabama – which opened amid much fanfare on 14 September – will also produce A319s and A320s. Its output is due to reach four aircraft per month by late 2017...

The Yamoussoukro Indecision

Full article on economist.com

Airline passengers in the West are spoiled. For all our complaining about poor customer service and stingy legroom—grumbles that Gulliver is only too happy to partake in—we live in the golden age of affordable, accessible flying. If Ireland's Ryanair wants to launch an obscure route between Latvia and Slovenia, it is free to do so. The need to schmooze foreign officials and navigate a forest of red tape has been systematically eroded by decades of pan-European liberalisation. In this fully deregulated environment, passengers reap the spoils with cheap airfares. Not so elsewhere in the world. Especially not so in Africa...

Metrojet disaster reverberates worldwide

Full article in PDF format

Whatever doubts remained about the crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 over the Sinai Peninsula were extinguished last month, when Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), told President Vladimir Putin in a televised meeting: "We can unequivocally say it was a terrorist act." A grim-faced Putin responded by pledging to "find and punish the perpetrators" of the atrocity, which killed 224 mostly Russian passengers and crew on 31 October.

Moscow had initially played down the possibility of a terrorism link, raising fears in the West that Putin might cover up the cause of the crash to deflect criticism of his military campaign in Syria. But as the body of evidence pointing to Islamic State (IS) involvement grew daily – comprising audio from the cockpit voice recorder, traces of explosives on the wreckage, intercepts of terrorist chatter, and claims of responsibility by IS – Russia shifted its narrative.

The Egyptian government now stands alone in denying evidence of an intentional act...