Optimized Descent into Stockholm

The folks at GE have put together a simple but interesting visualization that demonstrates the savings potential hidden in optimized descents rather than conventional stepped descents. It shows the would-be savings in fuel and time for approaches into Stockholm, Frankfurt, and Seattle. It is available here.

Qatar Airways steep departure from LHR 9R - Photo by Peter Russell

Once keen to connect the four corners of the earth via Doha on its own metal, Qatar Airways has changed its position and now looks set to join one of the three global airline alliances. This is a huge development that will fundamentally change Qatar Airways forever and make things more than a little uncomfortable for Emirates, Etihad and some of the major carriers in the alliances they don’t join.

A cursory glance would suggest that the alliance of choice should be the Star Alliance. After all Qatar Airways has engaged in codeshares with six of their carriers at one time or another – ANA, United, US Airways, Asiana, BMI, and Lufthansa. The thing is, these (and other) codeshares made sense to an unaligned Qatar Airways, but likely won’t for the next chapter. Entering into an alliance would allow wholesale changes to replace the feed and reach of those currently in place. These changes won’t be cost or pain free, but I think it’s well documented that Qatar Airways is not short of either money or determination. If we eliminate code shares as an indicator there is little else to suggest that Star would be the best fit.

The following three corridors lead me to believe that One World, not Star or SkyTeam offers the best fit.

Australia to Europe
While there are a vast number of one-stop routings linking cities in Australia with Europe the palatability of these routings is quite limited on One World metal. Travelling from Sydney to London is simple enough – you can transit in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Shanghai or even Tokyo – splitting your time in the air between Qantas, Cathy Pacific and British Airways metal. Move only slightly off the beaten path however, and one-stop options dry up pretty quickly. Brisbane to Manchester, Melbourne to Zagreb, or Perth to Barcelona are all more complex than they could be, requiring additional stops and travel time quickly. This makes the current One World offerings look weak. Qatar Airways would change this dramatically. Qantas does not operate to Doha right now but there is no doubt in my mind that we would see Qantas metal on the ground in Doha shortly after any announcement. A Sydney-Doha daily service is the obvious starting point for Qantas. This would likely move quickly to a double daily service or a daily to Sydney and Brisbane each. This order makes the most sense given that Qatar Airways presently only flies to Melbourne and Perth. I have not been able to get my hands on a copy of the Qatar-Australia bilateral but it’s safe to assume that Australian carriers have the same rights into Qatar that Qatari carriers currently have into Australia – that’s currently 14 weekly frequencies. What this means is that the only hurdle to getting things up and running is sourcing aircraft to conduct the flights. I suspect that Qantas operations into Frankfurt will be given a second look and possibly axed with a view to freeing up frames to serve Doha. Frankly, I’m amazed that Qantas even serves Frankfurt given that it’s a Star Alliance fortress – but that’s a topic for another day.

British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Qantas: Australia to Europe

British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Qatar Airways: Australia to Europe

The carrier that stands to lose the most from the above outcomes would be Emirates. Emirates currently provides a massive amount of possibilities (a lot of them one-stop) between four points in Australia and a raft of destinations in Europe. A Qantas-Qatar Airways tie-up would definitely impact Emirates’ loads and yields to and from Australia. There is some chatter in the Australian press about Emirates and Qantas discussing ways to work together but I’m not sure I see that going anywhere. A tie-up between Qantas and Emirates would not be very balanced in that Emirates would not gain very much. They already have a large footprint in Australia and almost don’t need Qantas. Then again keeping Qatar Airways out of the picture may be enough of a motivator. Should Qatar Airways end up joining One World I think it can be said with some certainty that that the idea of Emirates and Qantas working together would go right out of the window. Time will tell.

Europe and North America to India

Adding Qatar Airways would be a quick and effective way for One World to add destinations and capacity to India from both Europe and North America. Currently One World serves five cities in India – Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. Qatar Airways would more than double that list adding six secondary destinations – Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Goa, Kochi, Kolkata, Kozhikode, and Trivandrum – and add a heap of extra capacity into the markets already served. Essentially this would turn Doha into One World’s India hub – albeit in Arabia. Although Doha is more than a little chaotic between nightly 23:00 and 03:00 it still provides a far better transit experience than would be found at any airport in India.

British Airways footprint in India

Combined British Airways and Qatar Airways footprint in India

With Qatar Airways added to the One World mix, we would definitely see adjustments made at both British Airways and American Airlines to cater to new possibilities. I suspect British Airways would alter the existing Heathrow – Bahrain – Doha run to become Heathrow – Doha – Bahrain. This would allow British Airways to take advantage of Qatar Airways’ reach in India (and elsewhere) and do so with one-stop routings. In addition, British Airways would also be able to transfer Australia traffic to newly established Qantas flights.

The fit between Qatar Airways and American Airlines would not provide as many compelling routings, but there are definitely multiple small synergies that could yield great results. With the exception of Dublin, every destination that American serves in Europe is also served by Qatar Airways. Some light schedule shuffling would facilitate the smooth transfer of passengers between the two carriers reducing overall travel time. In addition to this, Qatar Airways would acquire incredibly deep reach into the US market. Premium travelers may not be all that receptive to two stop itineraries but there are more than enough passengers will be willing to endure two stops. A number of big markets will shift to one stop as Qatar Airways continues its US expansion. There are at least half a dozen cities that are likely to get service to Doha in the coming years. The only impact aligning with One World will have is changing the order in which cities are brought online. Dallas and Miami would jump to the front of that list.

There’s also the distinct possibility that American could begin service to Doha as well. Although United presently enjoys the “contract carrier” status for US government-purchased tickets to Qatar there is likely enough demand in the contractor community to start serving Doha.

Asia to Africa
The last market that merits a mention is the up-and-coming Asia to Africa corridor. With Chinese and Indian investment on the continent going through the roof, there is real and growing demand for capacity and flexibility. At present One World is ill equipped to capitalize on this trend. Once again, Qatar Airways would changes things overnight and could really help One World in the long term as they continue to make inroads in Africa.

One World routes between Africa and Asia

Combined One World and Qatar Airways routes between Africa and Asia

Looking Forward
While the above might seem like a lot to digest, I don’t believe that anything stated above is that farfetched. With only minor adjustments, One World carriers and Qatar Airways can all make immense strides forward and really put pressure on their competitors. It’s going to be very interesting to watch this unfold over the next two or three years.

Air New Zealand -777-300 on its delivery flight

As an ardent Springbok supporter it pains me to my very core to admit that the best-looking livery-aircraft combination gracing the skies today is none other than that of Air New Zealand’s 777-300ER in the special All Blacks livery. The airframe itself is spectacular but when coupled with a bold black basecoat it just demands your attention. The additional details in shades of gray and white complete the offering perfectly – a fitting tribute to the reigning world champions.

The sensible folks at Air New Zealand waited until after winning the world cup for a second time before unveiling this beauty. The same livery has now been applied to a number of smaller frames and though it does look good on most of them, it’s hard to top this bird. I mean seriously, just look at it. If there was even a sliver of a silver lining to the abominable refereeing of Bryce Lawrence (let’s be honest the ‘boks should have rolled the Wallabies, won it all, and extended 24 years of misery) I would have to say that this just might be it. Incidentally I flew Air New Zealand to and from last year’s world cup and loved every minute of it, even in the depths of economy class.

Conventional wisdom and hearsay suggest that airlines avoid black liveries as they show defects more easily, use heavier pigments and turn planes into ovens on the ground but I have not been able to substantiate any of this with any real evidence. If any kind soul at Air New Zealand would like to share any data or even a comment on these notions, please leave a comment or email me.

SAA 747SP - The aircraft that inaugurated CPT-LHR

Nearly three decades after the service was started using 747-SP aircraft, SAA has announced that is it will axe non-stop service between Cape Town and London. Given the demographic and commercial ties between the two cities and tourist appeal of the Western Cape, this may come as a surprise to many. To others the writing has been on the wall for a while.

Alliance Considerations

I’ve always believed that the Star Alliance was not the best fit for SAA. Looking at the South African diaspora and present day South Africa’s commercial alignments it’s clear that the most important markets were the UK, Australia, the USA, the Middle East, India, China and Brazil. The first three of those would have been best serviced through alignment with OneWorld. Heathrow provides coverage of London and the rest of the UK and Western Europe with a single stop. With the recent sale of British Midland to British Airways, most of onward connectivity within the Star Alliance through Heathrow has dried up. In the case of both the USA and Australia, SAA already serves two Oneworld fortresses in each country – Miami and New York in the US, Sydney and Perth in Australia. These existing routes would have permitted one-stop blanket coverage of all of North America and Australasia.

By virtue of being in Star, SAA has aligned itself to Lufthansa and its group of carriers funnelling traffic through Frankfurt, Zurich and Munich. In the context of south to north long haul flights, this does not make a tremendous amount of sense. A business traveller flying overnight from Cape Town to Manchester loses more time and productivity in transit through Frankfurt than through Heathrow. The status quo not only does this force SAA to offer less compelling options, the existence of these alignments cannibalizes potentially high yielding passengers from direct services that they do offer.

Aircraft Utilization

Planes don’t make money when they’re on the ground. The frame that operates Cape Town – Heathrow will spend almost 15 hours on the ground before returning to Cape Town. There are several other destinations screaming for service to South Africa making this underutilization acutely painful.

Competition

The South Africa to UK market is very price sensitive, particularly in economy class. This makes the lure of flying through the Middle East to save a few Rand hard for many to turn down. Etihad ceased flights to Cape Town in January but Emirates and Qatar Airways still offer service. Between them they offer anywhere between 5551 and 8323 seats per week between Cape Town and their hubs. It should be noted that Emirates are temporarily reducing Cape Town to a single daily for operational reasons. Curiously enough SAA codeshares with Emirates. I’m not at all sure how that came to be.

Visa Issues

There are other factors in play too albeit to a lesser extent. South Africans passport holders need to pay for a visa to transit the UK, adding to the cost of flying through Heathrow

SAA seem to be banking on funneling Cape Town passengers through Johannesburg but have not added any additional flights or capacity to the existing double daily between Johannesburg and London. I think it’s safe to say that the precious slots at LHR will end up in the hands of a Star Alliance partner till Cape Town flights can be resumed.

Interesting visual, but what does it mean?

Carriers and governments around the world seem to be getting increasingly hostile towards Emirates. Skirmishes in Canada and Germany are well documented but they are not the only fronts. In the background, there have been other smaller exchanges in Australia, India, France (really the whole EU) and South Africa to name but a few. In an effort to proliferate its views, the airline recently released a document detailing the things it feels global aviation stakeholders and travelers need to know. The PDF can be found here. Truth be told, I’m not so sure how useful this exercise has been. A cursory look at the web attention it has received seems to show that it has served only to force people to dig their heels further into the positions they already held. A few things about this document have left me perplexed:

1) I’m not sure who this document is aimed at. Consumers? Governments? Bored web surfers and bloggers? While there is interesting material in the document, it is a very disjointed read. Switching between things of interest to consumers and governments (and their oppositions I would imagine) at will. I can’t help but feel this would have been more effective if it were broken up into two targeted documents. One document aimed at consumers and one at governments and regulators. If the aim behind this was to spread its positions, I have serious doubts as to whether the average Joe is going to read 27 pages.

2) It looks like Emirates have decided on a militant us versus them stance. I say this because the document is written in such a way that unfavorable things attached to one carrier seem to bleed over into discussions about others – in particular the masked narrative that the big alliances are in fact monoliths with evil geniuses at the helm – particularly in Frankfurt. This is perhaps a little rich considering page 15 states that “it fits the objectives of some to classify the carriers in the Gulf as one unit – as if policies, governments, businesses and individuals are all alike across this diverse region.” I think in common aviation vernacular the term “Gulf carriers” has become attached to the Etihad, Qatar Airways and Emirates – my apologies to the smaller carriers of the region. I don’t think anyone can demonstrate too much diversity between these three entities.

3) On page 21 (and 6 other places) we are told “Open competition and free markets lay at the heart of Dubai’s status as a trading hub. Every day, Emirates goes head to head with more than 150 rival airlines serving Dubai International Airport.” It was my assumption then that the airplane created out of carrier names found on this page was comprised of these 150. As it turns out that was not the case. A quick scan of the names revealed only 145 carriers – this includes Emirates and its Dubai Inc cousin Fly Dubai. So down to 143 the number went. While it’s completely plausible that there are other carriers that were omitted I thought the list of carriers that did make the list was interesting enough to look at a little further. When you subtract out the cargo carriers (21 of them including Atlas, which I believe still flies for Emirates SkyCargo), bus services (to Sharjah and Abu Dhabi), defunct airlines and other anomalies the list starts to look rather more slender at 103 carriers. Still a very impressive number, just one behind the figure attributed to Paris, Charles de Gaulle. Of course, this 103 number would dip further if airlines banned in the EU were filtered out. I didn’t bother doing this because I don’t think it’s fair to punish Emirates because the UAE does not impose EU-style bans on Iranian and certain central Asian carriers. To be totally fair to Emirates, page 20 does state that the 150 does “include cargo and charter operators” – just not how many. An Excel file with filter can be found here.

4) The table on page 20 is a lot to digest. There are some oddities in the table:

• If Singapore Airlines operates 35% of flights out of SIN, how come Star Alliance’s share of that market is 30%?
• If Malaysia Airlines operates 28% of flights out of KUL, how come SkyTeam’s share of that market is only 5%? [Please ignore this. This was written before my morning coffee. :)]
  

Am I missing something here? If I am, please set me right in the comments section and I will make corrections/clarifications.

While frequencies matter (especially in congested/slot-restricted airports), ultimately market share is determined by seats. A seat count of the home carrier’s capacity in each market is conspicuously absent. Emirates’ smallest plane (in terms of passenger capacity) is its 3-class A330-200 which carries 237 passengers. The smallest plane likely to operate an international flight for any of the other carriers is probably about half that – around 120. This holds true even for Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific – though both are also all-wide body carriers like Emirates, they both have subsidiaries that operate narrow bodies and Emirates seems to want to count those operations too.

After a challenging few years that saw the carrier lose privileges to fly into the EU things now look to be on the right track at Garuda. To accommodate the growing domestic scene as well as demand to and from Indonesia Garuda have elected to sign up for an additional eleven A330-300′s. Assuming that these birds are configured like their current crop of A330-300′s they will carry 257 passenger in a 42/215 split between business and economy classes.

The A330 is a natural fit at Garuda. It provides additional lift and range the carrier needs while not adding too much operating cost since it already operates the type – presumably profitably. What remains to be seen is where this extra capacity and range will be used. Europe seems to be off the cards; the A330-300 does not have the range to fly to Europe directly from any major center in Indonesia and the only European nation with a strong tie to Indonesia – the Netherlands – is already well served both directly by KLM (serving both Jakarta and Denpasar) and with a Jakarta – Dubai – Amsterdam service operated by Garuda. The likelier candidates to see the new birds are the GCC nations where scores of Indonesians live, as well as services to northern Asia and Australasia, both major sources of tourists to the country. It is worth noting that Garuda have ordered A330′s before and then gone on to change and postpone delivery.

This deal was to be publicly announced by British Prime Minister, David Cameron who is on a tour of Asia promoting European and British business interests and products. Amusingly he’s travelling on a Boeing.

A sleepy late afternoon scene at AEP. Mad dogs galore.

A couple of years ago I blogged about Aerolineas Argentinas retiring the 737-200, the Chancha, from service. Today another icon of Argentine aviation – the MD80 – flew in Austral colours for the last time. Flight AU 2883 from Rio Gallegos to Aeroparque landed at 6:22 AM local time signalling the end of an era.

For many years the MD80 formed the backbone of the Austral fleet. In fact the longest serving MD80 ever built retired last month as LV-WFN. I had the pleasure of flying a few sectors on some of these birds a couple of years ago including a hop on one of the oddball Aeromexico hybrid liveried ones. The highlight for me was deplaning and boarding from the rear in Mendoza. The MD80 has been replaced by the very capable Embraer 190. At 20 strong the 190 now forms the backbone of the Austral fleet.

AC002, NRT-YYZ, has been cancelled but I’m told this is for an unrelated reason. So far the only cancellations of international AC ops has been YYZ-HKG (AC015) and YYZ-MBJ (AC982). Beyond this there are seven delays: with Basseterre, Bridgetown, Grand Cayman, Kingston, and London all feeling the brunt of this illegal action.