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

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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

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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...