SAS

Bankruptcy of Denmark’s Cimber Sterling will leave no long-lasting network gaps

Several airlines have moved quickly to fill the void left by the grounding last week of Cimber Sterling, although not one specific carrier will make major inroads. The LCC/regional operator accounted for only about 8% of seat capacity in its Danish home market and the market is highly fragmented. SAS is the largest carrier in Denmark and provided about one third of total seat capacity prior to Cimber Sterling’s bankruptcy while Norwegian Air Shuttle is the country’s second largest airline, with about a 14% share of capacity (seats), according to data from Innovata.  

Copenhagen Kastrup Airport is Norwegian’s third largest base in terms of weekly seat capacity after Oslo and Stockholm Arlanda. It was the first airline to take the plunge and open a base at Copenhagen when Sterling went bankrupt in 2008. Cimber Sterling’s failure will create opportunities for Norwegian to further build its Copenhagen base with additional Boeing 737s and increased frequencies on routes on which it competed with Cimber Sterling such as Barcelona, Malaga, Nice, Prague and Rome Fiumicino. Even before the grounding of Cimber Sterling, Norwegian had planned to base more aircraft at Copenhagen as of Jun-2012.

Norwegian's orders make it a candidate for first LCC to join a global alliance - or a Gulf carrier

In a distorted and fast changing airline world where partnerships and mergers are key to future survival, Nordic LCC, Norwegian is fast making itself one of the most attractive unattached propositions in the market.

Norwegian’s steady move towards becoming a long-haul Boeing 787 operator, alongside a growing European short-haul distribution system, promises to make it a serious low-cost network airline. The carrier’s recent deal to lock in access to a large fleet of 222 fuel-efficient short-haul aircraft over the second half of the decade (and at opportunistic prices) will transform a successful local LCC into a global force.

The order announcement therefore does a lot more than promise a bigger airline. Its potentially strong position now propels it into a new sphere where it becomes a candidate to be the first LCC member of one of the big three global alliances – until now the exclusive realm of legacy network airlines.

Vueling grows its low cost Barcelona hub role as Iberia Express focusses on Madrid premium traffic

Vueling's growth this year, the largest since its merger with rival Clickair in 2009, underscores the airline's role as a cost-effective hub carrier with connecting flights at Barcelona's El Prat Airport, a status Iberia concluded it could not achieve in Barcelona, largely pulling out of the market in favour of specially-formed LCC Clickair. After the Clickair-Vueling merger, Iberia retained part ownership (46%, now controlled by Iberia parent International Consolidated Airline Group) while the merged carrier continued its focus on Barcelona. The partnership appears to be working well for both Iberia and Vueling.

That focus has been re-affirmed by the airline's intention to grow summer destinations served from El Prat by a further 10, bringing the total to 70, 23 more than served last year, and representing a 17% seat increase at El Prat. The growth is supported by the addition of four A320s and a single A319.

Blue1 to become feeder for SAS' Copenhagen and Stockholm hubs in move against Finnair and Norwegian

SAS subsidiary Blue1 will undergo network changes that will see it drop its non-Scandianvan European routes in order to bolster services from secondary Finnish cities.

This will allow the SAS group to build greater feed into its Copenhagen Kastrup and Stockholm Arlanda hubs, a competitive move against Finnair and its Helsinki hub, as well as LCC Norwegian Air Shuttle and its Scandinavian hubs.

This development is only the first in what will be a number of changes across the group’s carriers up to 2015 under the new strategy as SAS seeks to become a more formidable force. Meanwhile low-cost carrier Norwegian Air Services continues to grow and threaten SAS’ dominance in the Nordic market.