Friday 24 August 2018

Ryanair: Not so nice now


Full article on economist.com

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...

Saturday 11 August 2018

A suicidal airline employee shows mercy


Full article on economist.com

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...

Wednesday 1 August 2018

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


Full article in PDF format

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...

Sunday 1 July 2018

Zimbabwe Airways crash lands


Full article in PDF format

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...

Friday 29 June 2018

Kyrgyzstan's Air Manas targets Beijing route launch


Full article on forbes.com

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...

Tuesday 26 June 2018

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


Full article on forbes.com

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...

Thursday 14 June 2018

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


Full article on forbes.com

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...

Thursday 7 June 2018

A misogynist cannot promote gender equality in aviation


Full article on economist.com

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...

Monday 28 May 2018

Why airliners in Cuba and Iran crash so much


Full article on economist.com

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...