Virgin Atlantic has reported another year of heavy financial losses. The airline has today published its financial results for the year ended 28 February 2013.
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When London Heathrow Terminal 5 opened a little over five years ago (the opening was a day many will never forget!), much was made by BA of the introduction of its “Galleries” lounge concept. At Heathrow, this comprises the “flagship” Concorde Room for first class passengers and Concorde Room cardholders, a Galleries First lounge for BA Executive Club Gold cardholders, three Galleries Club lounges and a Galleries Arrivals lounge for arriving passengers. The lounges were designed by what was then known as Davies & Baron. The lounges feature bespoke Osborne & Little patterns, bold statements such as horse lamps as well as more subtle art and design statements.
The Sunday Times reports that Flybe is to sell its portfolio of slots at London Gatwick and easyJet may be a prospective purchaser.
The Sunday Times has interesting story (Sunday Times Paywall) which states that Flybe is in discussions with easyJet to sell its portfolio of slots at London Gatwick airport.
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Iberia’s new CEO, Luis Gallego, announced a new leadership team for Iberia on Friday 10 May 2013. The number of directors reporting to the Iberia CEO has been reduced to nine. Of the nine strong management team, four are external appointments and the remainder are internal promotions.
Continue reading “Iberia’s new CEO, Luis Gallego, overhauls Iberia’s management”
As previously mentioned, International Airlines Group published its 1st quarter results in Friday.
On the morning of the announcement, as per standard protocol, it held a webcast for analyst and the question and answer session that follows provides a lot of useful insight into current strategic developments at the airline group.
Here is a summary of some points of interest from the call:
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International Airlines Group (IAG) has just published its financial results for the first quarter of the year.
Once again, the results are a tale of two airlines with a stark divergence in the performance of British Airways and Iberia. IAG made an overall operating loss of €278 million. However, IAG had to also take another exceptional charge of €311 million in connection with the restructuring of Iberia. This is in addition to the exceptional charges and provisions IAG took at the end of 2012. The overall loss after tax for the quarter was €630 million.
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Although Vueling is now majority owned by International Airlines Group (“IAG”), the airline remains a listed entity and it has today published its results for the 1st quarter of 2013.
Continue reading “Vueling demonstrates its value to IAG with a strong set of 1st Quarter results”
British Airways has announced it is to launch a new, thrice weekly, route from London Gatwick to Larnaca.
The route launches on 30 June 2013 and will operate in addition to BA’s daily service from London Heathrow.
The flight operates on Sunday, Monday and Thursday. As is common for Garwick the flight operates at different times on each operating day.
Flight BA2674 departs at 08:35 on Monday (returning from Larnaca at 16:10), 14:40 on Thursday (returning at 22:05) and 09:25 on Sunday (returning at 17:00). The flight will be operated with a Boeing 737 aircraft.
Flights are on sale now at ba.com
From a network development point of view there are a couple of interesting points to note.
First this is another new London Gatwick route which, like Barcelona and Las Vegas, operates in parallel to Heathrow. In recent times London Gatwick and Heathrow have tended to maintain broadly distinct networks but the latest Gatwick routes are a reversal of this trend. Heathrow has also moved into Gatwick’s leisure territory with seasonal routes to Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza and Gran Canaria.
Secondly, this is a relatively long range route which indicates where BA sees growth in the difficult short haul market at Gatwick.
British Airways has confirmed changes to its London Gatwick short-haul timetable for the Winter 2013 season, which starts at the end of October.
The changes announced for so far are relatively minor, but in the context of perennial uncertainty over the future of BA’s London Gatwick short-haul operation, that is no bad thing.
Flights to Salzburg increase from 7 to 8 a week, with an additional flight on Tuesday.
Flights to Paphos continue twice weekly on Mondays and Fridays until 29 November 2013. Flights currently operate four weekly in the summer season.
Flights to Marrakech increase from 7 to 10 weekly, with additional flights on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Note that each additional flight has a different departure and arrival time. Flight BA 2668 departs London Gatwick at 11:35 on Monday (returning 15:50), 06:45 on Wednesday (returning 11:00), and 06:55 on Saturday (returning 11:10).
British Airways has confirmed changes to its London Heathrow short-haul timetable for the Winter 2013 season, which starts at the end of October.
The changes are relatively modest and mainly concern small increases and decreases in frequencies on certain routes.
– Agadir increases from two flights a week to three.
– Basel increases from 21 to 26 flights a week.
– Amsterdam, Athens, Hamburg and Nice also benefit from small increases of 1-2 flights a week.
– Flights to Manchester reduce from 72 to 68 a week.
– Prague also reduces by five flights from 33 to 28 flights a week.
– Aberdeen, Barcelona, Budapest, Dusseldorf, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Paris Charles de Gualle, Rome, Stockholm and Zurich also reduce by 1-3 flights a week.
The daily flight to Larnaca also reverts back from a night-time departure to a day-time departure from London Heathrow, with the flight from Heathrow leaving at 12:05 and returning to Heathrow at 19:40.
There are also timetable changes to Rotterdam with BA’s three daily flights moved to earlier times. There are also relatively modest changes to timings for BA’s twice daily flights to Bergen and Stavanger.
BA’s weekly summer Saturday flights from London Heathrow to Ibiza and Palma de Mallorca also finish on Saturday 26 October 2013. The airline will continue to fly all year round to Ibiza and Palma de Mallorca from London City airport.