London Air Travel

London Air Travel

Hello and welcome to our Monday Briefing for the week beginning 11 June 2018, summarising the main developments in air travel over the past week, and a look the week ahead.

Qatar Airways now operating for BA

Qatar Airways is now operating selected long-haul flights for BA.

It is operating all BA flights to Kuwait until 30 June / 1 July, Muscat until 20 / 21 August, as well as one of its two daily flights to Dehli, also until 20 / 21 August.

All flights are being operated by Airbus A330-200 aircraft in a two class configuration. Qatar has sent three aircraft to Heathrow for these flights.

It is worth noting that since BA first published rebooking guidance for passengers, this has been updated.

Passengers in Club World can also fly to Kuwait and Muscat via Abu Dhabi on Etihad by connecting from a BA flight from London Heathrow to Abu Dhabi. Club World passengers due to fly to Delhi can also fly on Air India by connecting from one of BA’s own services from London Heathrow to India.

According to publicly available flight data, two out of ten BA Boeing 787-8 aircraft have been out of service for some weeks (Registrations G-ZBJD & G-ZBJE). At the time of writing, four out of eighteen BA Boeing 787-9 aircraft have not flown since at least Friday 8 June 2018 (Registrations G-ZBKC, G-ZBKJ, G-ZBJK & G-ZBKO).

The following flights also remain cancelled:

– BA280 / BA281 London Heathrow – Los Angeles until Thursday 5 July 2018
– BA278 / BA279 London Heathrow – San Jose until Sunday 17 June 2018
– BA5 / BA6 London Heathrow – Tokyo Narita until Tuesday 26 June 2018

Update: Rolls-Royce has this morning issued an update advising that a similar component issue to the one in “Package C” Trent 1000 engines has been found in some “Package B” engines. Therefore, precautionary checks will be carried out on these engines. This is likely to lead to further disruption.

IAG CEO Willie Walsh speaks at the IATA AGM

IATA held its Annual General Meeting together with the World Air Transport Summit in Sydney last week. It did of course generate a lot of headlines for the wrong reasons.

Although many airline CEOs were in attendance, as most of them lead public companies, they can’t actually say much beyond what they have already told their investors. IAG CEO Willie Walsh is always good value at a conference, expressing incredulity at Alitalia spending €7m on new uniforms whilst in administration.

The Centre For Aviation has published an interview with Willie Walsh as part of its daily publications during the event.

A couple of quotes of note on IAG’s bid for Norwegian and the Airbus A321 long range at Aer Lingus, which may ultimately be ordered by other IAG airlines such as BA:
Continue reading “Monday Briefing – 11 June 2018”

London Air Travel

Hello and welcome to our Monday Briefing for the week beginning 4 June 2018, summarising the main developments in air travel over the past week, and a look the week ahead.

Oneworld introduces “Oneworld Connect” membership

Ever since International Airlines Group acquired Aer Lingus there has been the perennial question as to when the airline would rejoin the alliance after it left in 2007.

In spite of early promises that Aer Lingus would rejoin the alliance, there appears to be no evidence of any imminent activity.

Perhaps we now have an answer. On Sunday 3 June 2018 at the IATA AGM in Sydney (fortuitously for the delegates timed to coincide with Vivid Sydney), Oneworld announced a new form of membership known as “Oneworld Connect”.

Oneworld Connect places significantly lower obligations on members. They only have to offer priority check-in and boarding to all Oneworld frequent flyers.

Other Oneworld benefits such as mileage earning and redemption and lounge access will only be offered to customers of “sponsoring airlines”, of which there must be at least three. More benefits can be offered by agreement with individual airlines.

This is clearly a tacit admission that Oneworld has gone as far as it can in securing new members. There are lots of airlines which with Oneworld members have varying levels of co-operation. Not just Aer Lingus. But also its fellow IAG subsidiary Vueling. Other potential candidates could include Air Italy, Alaska Airlines, Bangkok Airways and Royal Air Maroc.

It has also been confirmed that BA and Fiji Airways are to explore areas for co-operation. BA and Fiji Airways have already sought regulatory approval for BA to codeshare on Fiji Airways flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Fiji. An announcement about this could come as soon as this week.

IAG Negotiations with Airbus

When IAG released its first quarter results last month, Willie Walsh confirmed that the group was in discussions with aircraft and engine manufacturers on a new aircraft order.

It is expected that the order will be announced in the next 12 months. Talks with Boeing and General Electric were described as “particularly constructive”. And now we can see why.

Bloomberg reports that IAG has suspended talks with Airbus over an order for new Airbus A380s.

Airlines of course have regular discussions with aircraft manufacturers and conversations are leaked for a reason.

The real story here is that BA/IAG do want more Airbus A380 aircraft, but clearly not at any price.

IAG has previously mooted leasing second hand Airbus A380s, but this has evidently not come to anything. So now it’s back to looking at new aircraft. IAG has options for a further seven aircraft. Whilst Willie Walsh has suggested Airbus A380s could be deployed at Aer Lingus and Iberia, this seems unlikely. Aer Lingus doesn’t even have plans to introduce the Airbus A350.

The A380 is clearly serving BA well on major trunk routes and there is scope to add more year round capacity to more routes.

On a related note, BA took delivery of its 18th Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (registration G-ZBKS) and its 27th Dreamliner aircraft in total on 31 May 2018. It is due to complete its inaugural scheduled passenger flight to New Orleans today. It will no doubt provide some welcome additional capacity as it addresses engine issues with the rest of is Dreamliner fleet.
Continue reading “Monday Briefing – 4 June 2018”