It’s Friday again, so it must be time for me to look at the news for the week:
Ryanair takes its balls away…
Ryanair pulls aircraft and services from Manchester – Analysis on here on why O’Liar is talking once again out of his back side.
BBC News, GhettoIFE.com
Korean Air – Profit!
Korean Air posted a net income of 78.5b won ( or about $62.4 million) for Q2/2009 – with their profit comes on the back of exchange rates working in their favour. Loads for cargo are of course still down, whilst passenger loads are static.
Korean air should be able to ride this out – however reliance on currency to make a profit is a bad idea….
(Flight)
SIA – Traffic Down
Singapore airlines are feeling the downturn at the moment with a 13% drop in traffic – From 79.7% from 81%.
Hard times are hitting this proud airline now – what is SIA’s plan for getting out of this mess? With the withdrawal of 747’s, the costs will drop slightly, but they will still need to deliver new capacity to replace these beasts….
(Flight)
Air AsiaX breaths down Eithad and Middle Eastern Carriers – Launches Abu Dhabi Service.
The Longhaul Ryanair of Asia – Air Asia X is extending its reach with a new service to Abu Dhabi commencing 23rd October, 5 times a week with a single A340.
This is an interesting play as it could mark the beginning of the expansion of Air Asia X into a Middle Eastern Virtual Hub. Certainly with the A350 order, they’re starting to turn into a force not to be underestimated…
(Flight)
Qantas Profits 87% down…
But still in profit. Blames the usual suspects (H1N1, Ressesion, Flying Pigs, etc)
(Flight)
Virgin Atlantic considering NOT going it alone – considering Star Alliance Membership
And about bloody time. Whilst the CEO of VS, Steven Ridgway said that Virgin will “fight this right to the end,” while responding to the increased competition, they’re “We know that Lufthansa now owns BMI and it would make a lot of sense to work more closely,” he said.
Virgin are on the brink of being a small fish in a big sea after cherry picking routes. Time to grow up possibly?
(Travel Blackboard via the BMI Diamond Club Forum)
Brown Goes Red… Once only though. Pretty much dumping your date after you’ve… (do I need to go on?)
According to different sources, the Virgin charter of a B747 is for ONE TRIP ONLY. Well talk about shouting out of ones backside. NEXT!
Wizz Air Wizzes into Bratislava – Declares Time up for SkyEurope
Just as Ryanair is decimating the Western European aviation sector, Wizz Air are doing the same in Eastern Europe. After dispatching of LOT’s CentralWings (which is still flying in name, but is being slowly folded back into LOT), it’s now time to deal with Sky Europe.
SkyEurope has been suffering (least of all having some of its aircraft repossessed by the lessor) and is currently in creditor protection. Therefore, WizzAir is going for broke in this sector, and to break the remains of SkyEurope.
Ryanair… WizzAir… The two big bloc controllers of the LCC market?
Ocean Air (Brazil) Comes out of near to nowhere and goes for broke…
Here’s another airline I’ve never heard of – Ocean Air. Based in Brazil and currently running a Foker F100 fleet, they’re branching out into A319’s… and from 2015 – A350XWB-800’s.
A quick look at the colour scheme gives away who owns Ocean Air – Columbian based airline Avianca who will be running 787’s, citing different countries – different aircraft – different missions.
Well variety is the spice of life isn’t it?
Norwegian up, SAS Suffering.
Norwegian is doing very well at the moment with an $11m profit (well for these conditions anything with a plus must be good). SAS on the other hand lost $251m. SAS is trying to recover, but is slowly turning into yet another European basket case airline – and implementing CoreSAS as reported last week.
Cut too close to the Core SAS and you’ll loose it….
JAL Cargo to Merge… what lies ahead?
Japan Airlines s in talks to merge its cargo business Nippon Yusen citing falling cargo loads.
Ominously, there is a warning of further consolidation down the line…
BBC News, Flight
SouthWest – Mass WiFi deployment
Well someone had to do it – and hopefully this will kick start WiFi in the air competition into overdrive. SouthWest airlines is equiping its entire fleet of 737’s (300/500/700’s) – 545 aircraft with Row 44’s KU based BroadBand/WiFi System.
This is very big news as it make the econmics of depolyment very cheap, and hopefully the cost of it to be cheap too.
And if other companies want to go with Row 44, this is simply going to mean the cost will fall for the equipment.
Flight
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Right – thats your bite sized news for this week.
I’m not sure there will be news next week as I’ll be 35000ft or so in the air at publishing time – more to come!
