International Airlines Group is holding its annual Capital Markets today, Friday 7 November.
Whilst the presentations are very much aimed at the investor community (This is the full slide deck – all 144 slides!.) there are some useful updates for passengers.
Here are some small items of news we’ve gleaned so far:
A quick wrap up of some recent BA related developments:
1. After some six and a half years, the use of bus gates for passengers travelling on short-haul flights from Terminal 3 should have now largely come to an end. All short-haul flights should ordinarily be boarded from a gate with a jetty attached.
2. BA is due to open a new lounge at Washington Dulles airport on Friday 26 September. The refurbished facility extends to 10,000 square feet. Passengers travelling in first flass will have access to a waiter service diner area and private bar. All eligible passengers will also be able to enjoy a deli style dining area, a deli bar, rain showers, a business suite. BA also promises power points at almost every seat in the lounge. The new lounge launches in advance of A380 operations at the airport starting on 2 October.
3. BA has withdrawn four special meals with effect from 1 October. These are fruit platter, bland meal, jain meal and seafood meal. Any existing bookings will be honoured.
Last week, Air France flights were significantly disrupted by industrial action by Air France pilots.
The industrial action was due to end tomorrow, Monday, 22 September. However, the latest news is that industrial action will continue until Friday 26 September.
The essence of the dispute are plans by Air France’s parent company, Air France KLM, to expand its low cost Transavia unit (as summarised by the Financial Times.)
As of Sunday evening, cancellations have been loaded for Monday 22 September and Tuesday 23 September on the London Heathrow – Paris Charles de Gaulle route and real time flight departure & arrival information is available on the Air France website.
Air France has also provided specific guidance on cancellation and rebooking options on its website.
British Airways has today announced it is to return to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur from 27 May 2015.
BA will operate a daily flight from London Heathrow Terminal 5, initially with a four class Boeing 777 (this may change to Boeing 787).
Flight BA33 – Depart London Heathrow 20:15 – Arrive Kuala Lumpur 16:00
Flight BA34 – Depart Kuala Lumpur 23:05 – Arrive London Heathrow 05:25
The flight timings work well for the business traveller. BA and others have long argued that expansion at Heathrow will open up routes to the East, so it is good to evidence of this in action.
Kuala Lumpur is of course currently served twice daily by fellow Oneworld alliance partner Malaysian Airlines which has had some well documented problems of late and is currently undergoing a restructuring. There is no news yet on whether Malaysian Airlinesis to reduce capacity from London Heathrow. As BA and Malaysian do not have anti-trust immunity they would be prohibited from discussing/co-ordinating capacity and scheduling decisions on this route.
It’s noteworthy that BA has allocated a peak early arrival slot to this route, traditionally reserved for long-standing “trunk” routes such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Johannesburg, so it’s clearly expected to an important route.
There is also no news yet on any codeshares with Malaysian Airlines on regional routes from Malaysia which we expect will be important to sustain the route.
Flights are now on sale on ba.com
Eligible passengers will have access to the Malaysia Airlines Golden Lounge at Kuala Lumpur airport. BA flights will depart from Satellite Terminal A.
Finally, for various reasons, new routes to Asia tend to take a while to grow passenger traffic and BA has in the past offered special fares for new route launches such as Chengdu and Seoul, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for any special fares when launch date approaches.
Update May 2015: Contrary to our suggestions above, forward bookings have been described by IAG CEO Willie Walsh as being very strong, so we do not expect any downgrading of capacity by BA on this route.
Update May 2015: Here are a couple of images from the PR event to mark the launch of the route:
Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty ImagesAir France pilots are currently engaged in a week long strike, due to end on Monday 22 September. The strike has caused significant disruption to Air France operations, including London Heathrow – Paris Charles de Gaulle flights.
Embed from Getty ImagesToday, Monday 15 September, four out of eight departures from London Heathrow to Paris Charles de Gaulle we cancelled.
On Tuesday 16 September, all departures from London Heathrow to Paris Charles de Gaulle have been cancelled.
On Wednesday 17 September, four out of eight departures from London Heathrow to Paris Charles de Gaulle have been cancelled (this has now increased to six as of Tuesday evening).
No flights on Thursday 18 September are currently showing as cancelled. This is likely to change over the coming days (Five out of eight flights are cancelled as of Tuesday evening, now increased to seven as of Wednesday evening).
No flights on Friday 19 September are currently showing as cancelled. (Six out of eight flights are now cancelled as of Wednesday evening.)
Air France has provided specific guidance on cancellation and rebooking options on its website.
In addition, real time flight departure & arrival information is also available on the Air France website.
British Airways’ expansion at London City airport continues with the launch of a twice daily service (excluding weekends) from the airport to Hamburg in Germany from 27 October 2014.
The route will be operated for BA by its Scandinavian franchise partner SUN-AIR using a single cabin (so no Club Europe business class) Dornier 328 Turboprop commuter aircraft.
Here is the planned timetable:
The owners of Heathrow and Gatwick are currently campaigning for their respective airports to gain an additional runway (a third runway in the case of Heathrow and a second runway in the case of Gatwick) as part of The Airports Commission’s appraisal of the options for additional runway capacity in the South East of England.
The nub of Gatwick’s campaign under the banner “Gatwick Obviously” is that, as well as being able to secure a new runway at much less cost, additional capacity at Gatwick is essential to provide effective competition between Gatwick and Heathrow.
Key to Heathrow’s campaign for a third runway is that additional capacity is essential to secure links between the UK and international growth markets in Asia and elsewhere.
Continue reading “A tale of two routes: London Heathrow to Austin, Texas and Chengdu, China”
British Airways to show Sky Sports’ popular weekly Soccer AM on some of its long-haul flights from 19 August 2014.
The airline will also show weekly highlights of Premier League games from the 2014/2015 season of the Barclays Premier League.
The London City – Dublin route is going to become significantly more competitive from 26 October 2014 when British Airways launches a five daily service between the two airports.
This route has traditionally been a mainstay of CityJet which operates the route up to 7 times a day. BA will also be completing against Flybe, a new entrant to the airport, which also launches this route at the time as BA.
There are two points of note from this announcement:
1. It shows a significant commitment by BA to Dublin.
Until two years ago, BA did not serve the city at all as it relied on codeshares with Aer Lingus. BA returned to Dublin after it inherited the London Heathrow – Dublin route from BA. From 26 October 2014, BA will operate up to 13 flights a day combined from London Heathrow and London City. BA is also moving London Heathrow – Dublin flights from Terminal 1 to 5 on the same day.
2. This puts more competitive pressure on CityJet.
This is the second occasion in recent times BA has launched a route at London City that has been well served CityJet, which was recently sold by Air France-KLM. The other route being Rotterdam. CityJet has withdrawn routes such as London City – Edinburgh and diversified away from London City, launching routes from UK regional airports, such as Cardiff.
BA is cancelling the London City – Aberdeen and London City – Stockholm routes to make way for this service and flights are now on sale on ba.com
A few years ago, British Airways earned itself the moniker “London Airways” amongst some frequent flyers.
A long struggling regional operation (latterly known as “BA Connect”) offering flights from Birmingham, Manchester, Southampton and other regional airports was sold to Flybe in late 2006.
BA’s sole remaining international flight from a non-London UK airport, Manchester to New York JFK, was cancelled a couple of years later. This left BA (excluding franchise partners) operating international flights only from London airports.
Whether this was the right move strategically depends on your point of view. There is the argument that BA is right to focus on London which is one of the largest centres of premium business traffic in the world. There is also the argument that BA failed to make the necessary moves to adapt its cost base to changing market conditions and maintain its resonance in the UK market.
Yet tonight (Sunday) the very last departure of an any airline at Edinburgh airport is a BA Airbus A320 operating as flight BA8990 direct to Ibiza.
The flight will arrive on the white island shortly after 2.30am. One hour later it will return to Edinburgh as BA8991 to land in Edinburgh at 05:40. Just in time for one of the first of 25 flights BA will operate from Edinburgh to London Heathrow, Gatwick and City airports on Monday.
So what’s going on?
For some clues, we can look at the Civil Aviation Authority statistics on aircraft utilisation by different airlines.
An easyJet Airbus A320 aircraft spends, on average, 10.9 hours a day in the air. The equivalent number for British Airways is 8.4.
The difference can in part be explained by Heathrow. Parking and slot restrictions and the need to offer business friendly timetables for “out and back in a day” business travellers mean that not all aircraft can return to Heathrow overnight.
Nonetheless the difference is significant as far as profitability is concerned. Legacy carriers have traditionally lost money on short-haul operations but have relied on more profitable long-haul operations to offset them. Rising fuel prices and intense competition from new entrants means this is no longer possible.
Some airlines, like Lufthansa, have transferred some short-haul operations to lower cost subsidiaries. In Lufthansa’s case this is Germanwings.
BA seems to be opting for a number of initiatives to improve short-haul profitability. And this is one of them. By flying from Edinburgh to Ibiza overnight the aircraft is working for six hours that would otherwise be spent idle on the ground in Edinburgh.
The one downside is of course that if the aircraft decides it doesn’t want to leave La Isla Blanca there will be a lot of disgruntled commuters in Edinburgh on Monday morning!
At the moment this is just a tentative step with two weekly return flights to Ibiza, increasing to three later in the peak of the Ibiza season. However, if this is considered a success then expect the initiative to be extended to other regional airports next summer.