O'Leary sticks it to HM Government

Not being one of the Crown's loyal subjects, Mr O'Leary is not necessarily subject to such punishment as locking him up in the Tower or leaving him Hung, Drawn and Quartered. Much though I am sure that Hon Gwyneth Dunwoody MP, Chair(wo)man Transport Committee of the British House of Commons would perhaps like him to be.

However he has a point about the issues being raised at the session being somewhat off point. HMG (Her Majesty's Government) and even its Loyal Opposition have both focused on the issue of the way pricing is displayed to (in the mind of Mr O'Leary) the real issue of extra taxes without extra value.

if you wish to have a quiet "Titter" then read the release on Ryanair's website. http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=07&month=jul&story=gen-en-260707

Guy Fawkes would have been proud.

Cheers

Timothy

Airline Branding Oz Style - Its callled.........

Politely "Pissing on your neighbours".

The day after Qantas announced a subtle next generation branding for the uber brand airline - Virgin Blue announced the decision of the jury of its own naming for its Transpacific Airline.

V Australia.

Now I am sure there is much consternation in Mascott right now. V Australia for the old hands is probably a throwback to the days when Qantas 707s were called V Jets.

It is interesting to note that under the terms of the Virgin Group brand franchise, use of the Virgin name is not permitted for the operators of the Virgin brand for airlines in Australia to stray anyway outside of their own territory using the Virgin name. Hence Pacific Blue is the name for the TransTasman and South Pacific services. So lets count the operator list of the Virgin brand in Airlines:

Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Express (now Brussels Airlines)
Virgin Blue
Virgin Nigeria
Virgin America

So technically only 2 should ever appear at the same location at the same time. Virgin Atlantic is allowed everywhere.

So poor old Qantas. Nice shiny new paint jobs with the new logo type and mods. Too bad they have been upstaged by V. I wonder what they will call it for short

Cheers

Timothy

US DoT policy on China Route Awards - puzzling to say the least

The Government always moves in mysterious ways. This time it is downright screwy.

Effectively the government has decided to consolidate the 2007 and 2009 China route awards. Thus creating a strange situation that would mean that United Airlines automatically gets the 2008 award yet the competition for 2007 and 2009 are hotly contested. For a learned discourse on this go to the Aviation Week website: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/NDCH07177.xml

However logic would normally suggest that the route awards should be engaged by priority of value proposition. Not so it would appear. Only if you choose the right award date process does it work. Again go figure.

So why the DoT has decided to do this seems to be that the US Dept of Transportation is trying to outdo the European Directorates in bureaucratic nonsense.

If all else fails give it to Maxjet so I can fly from my favorite airport of Seattle on a reasonable seat.

oops that sounds like a special interest statement. Sorry........

Virgin America - Shiny New Planes - website needs some work

OK - so I couldn's resist it - I had to take the new Virgin America Website for a spin.

Very pleasing on the eye but BOY does someone from usability need to work on this thing. its terrible. Full of Flash style MS XML stuff that makes the whole experience very tedious.

It has clearly not had a lot of time to test the full capability as i found numerous bugs and lots of annoyances that really should not happen in a top class airline as VA hopes to be.

So chaps great ideas but - please make a non-MSXML 5.0 site version. Then the real people can use it. god help anyone who is still on dial up.

Cheers

Timothy

Westjet nixes AiRes - Travelport and IBS get bloody nose

After leaning over backwards to accomodate Travelport - Westjet finally announced it was pulling the plug on the Aires project and staying put with its aging OpenSkies solution for PSS.

This creates a significant problem for Westjet which is expanding fast and after a few fumbles needs the capability of an advanced Internal res system to maintain its growth.

The impact of this decision is that there are some beneficiaries for WestJet's action. Air Canada and ITA must be breathing a huge sigh of relief because it buys them more time on Polaris. Air Canada must also be happy that no other Alliance is going to be present in Canada for at least the next 2 calendar years. Probably there will be rejoicing in the Unisys camp and probably at Results too. However the big winners are probably Sabre, Navitaire and Amadeus who will be celebrating the misfortune of their most noisy competitor.

Then there are those who must be pretty nervous about now. Virgin Blue is happy not to have to proceed with their implementation but Virgin America is probably having kittens and hoping against hope that the system stays up and running over the next 4 weeks. All of Aires customers must be making urgent phone calls to their lawyers.

Its always unfortunate to see an industry supplier such as IBS stumble. Lets hope they use the time wisely and take the time to fix their problems. Insiders tell us this is not a trivial matter for any player.

Cheers

Timothy

Alitalia - and then there were ... NONE???

Oh wow is me - the auction for Alitalia has now officially collapsed. AirOne and its bidding group have officially withdrawn so now there are no bidders.

There are some good lessons to be learned here.

1. The world is not Italy
2. Listen up Iberia board... dont make the same mistakes

Seriously though - this should be taken as an opportunity for the Prodi government to go back to the drawing board and re-cast the bidding in a transparent manner.

Oh yes and do remember our favorite bete noir is lurking in the wings with a suit against the EC for their previous do nothing approach to state aid to Alitalia (and others). So lets be clear. If the Prodi administration has to invest any more cash into Alitalia - then there is going to be a nasty fight. Mr O'Leary will force the EC to take a hard line on this subject or risk being taken to court in an embarassing result of having to claim the money back.

Is anyone paying attention in Athens?

Doesn't anyone in Rome remember Swissair and Sabena?

This one is going to run for a while yet

Cheers

Timothy

Holy Cow - that's Billions with a B - DL Quarterly Profit

The headline numbers are staggering:
http://www.atwonline.com/news/story.html?storyID=9602

$1.77Billion profit before extraordinary charges. Still leaving $274 million net is not a bad number for a light quarter.

However this will come as little comfort to those of you who have experienced Delta's current "superior service" (as I did on the floor in Atlanta Airport). There was a great piece on The US pulbic radio network NPR (audio and text) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11980704.

Now is the summer of our discontent.

If you want to avoid problems check back here or our sister Blog www.t2impact.blogger.com where we will be providing some practical advice.

Cheers

Timothy

SQ to dump VS stake

So the much vaulted (8 years ago) deal between these high branded fellows looks like it will finally end with a nice profit for SQ and VS firmly back in the hands of Sir Richard the Lion Heart.

Did it fail? Yes it did not live up to its aspirations. There were 3 primary reasons that SQ took the stake.

1. An insurance policy for its alliance. At the time you will recall that United and Air Canada were hardly in the best of shape and clearly didnt have a good feed for SQ. They still dont BTW.
2. A great investment. This has been proven and so those canny chaps in SQ made that a good point.
3. Access to LHR. This issue is no longer as important as it once was.

Was it a good deal? Yes great deal all round except the synergies didnt happen and most of the expectations were not realized. There have been very few passenger benefits and VS has (probably) wisely steered clear of the Alliance game to date. Dont forget that SQ harbors significant aspirations across the Pacific with its sights set on Oz to US West Coast. These have been dashed by the likes of local hero Virgin Blue who will be flying transpac next year if they have any say in the matter.

What will happen next?

Branson likes partners. I suspect he will be on the look out for another player. However with Virgin Blue now going Transpac and Virgin America coming to an airport near you in the USA - there really is no need for a partner.

Dont look for any near term change.

Cheers

Timothy

What is the state of the state for Long Haul LCC?

We have been tracking the Long Haul LCC roller coaster. As we predicted in February of this year the market for Long Haul LCC would heat up in 2007. Seems like we might have even underestimated the scale.

If we look at the premier LCCs in the world today we can easily say that the top players include:

Ryanair, Gol, Air Asia, Air Berlin, Virgin Blue and Jetstar. (I am not counting hybrids like US Airways or Airtran who don’t quite count at the moment). Each of these players have taken a slightly different path to Long Haul LCC.

Ryanair will take advantage of the Semi-Open Skies between EU and US next year. Gol bought Varig, Air Asia has the Air Asia X JV with a certain Brit, Virgin Blue plumped down some of its cash for 777s to fly across the Pacific. Jetstar is a surrogate for QF and a replacement for Australian Airlines. Finally Air Berlin jumped into the fray with its purchase of LTU and the recent order this week for 25 787s.

The stage is now set for a explosive growth in long haul LCC. With so much capacity in the Europe-Asia markets, Transpac looking up and even the stodgy old Transatlantic market picking up - the opportunities for significant traffic number growth is looking quite good.

Now of course where will these people end up and is there enough capacity to entertain them once they get there? We shall see

Cheers
Timothy