Finland

Airlines in transition: Hybrid and low-cost carriers push for better airline-airport relationships

Alex Cruz, CEO of Spanish LCC Vueling, spoke passionately at a recent conference of his need to see partnerships between airports and airlines that are deep and long-lasting. Mr Cruz referred specifically to co-operation that permits both partners to benefit from alternative revenue generation. Ahead of the forthcoming CAPA Airlines in Transition conference in Istanbul – which will feature some 30 airline CEOs addressing this and related issues – we consider how these parties have collaborated in the past and how it is shaping up now.

Vueling Airlines has become one of the innovators of the hybrid/low-cost business model that has become more prevalent and is found in other airlines such as easyJet (progressively) and Flybe (one of the originators of the model).

The fast changing airline industry makes life difficult for airport planners – just as change also offers opportunities.

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.

Europe’s airlines press European Commission to ensure Single European Sky targets are met

There are few subjects that Europe’s airlines can agree on, but the lamentable state of the European air traffic control system is one of them. This week, industry bodies representing all sectors of the European air transport market blasted the efforts of European member states and their air navigation service providers (ANSPs) on reducing costs and increasing efficiency for falling short of where they should be.

Air traffic inefficiency and the high costs associated with Europe’s patchwork air traffic management (ATM) system are estimated to cost the European aviation industry between EUR4 billion and EUR5 billion p/a. The delays and inefficient routings punish both passengers and airlines, increasing flight times and distances and driving up fuel burn and greenhouse gas emissions, a particularly galling situation given the entry of aviation into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme next year.

SAS to increase leisure share under ‘4Excellence’ strategy

SAS has unveiled “4Excellence”, the group’s new strategy that replaces its successful “Core SAS” turnaround programme, which will be brought to an end in 2012. 4Excellence will build on the foundations of its predecessor by concentrating the group’s resources on four key areas: commercial, sales, operational and people excellence. SAS has staged a remarkable turnaround in recent years under the Core SAS programme, which culminated in a strong 1H2011 (six months to 30-Jun-2011) performance from the Scandinavian carrier, outperforming the majority of its rivals.

Intra-Europe traffic trends in the right direction, but outlook darkens for Europe’s carriers

European airlines continued to report positive passenger traffic results in Aug-2011, the final month of the summer peak travel period, when European airlines make the bulk of their revenue. Almost all of the major airlines reported year-on-year increases in load factor and passenger numbers, despite the increasingly worrying economic backdrop affecting business and consumer confidence across the region. If such uncertainty continues, European carriers may be in for a bumpy end to 2011.