August 2009 Archives

Earlier this week Airline Business travelled to Sao Paolo, where Brazilian operator TAM announced it is replacing its multiple legacy systems with the Amadeus Altea customer management solution in advance of joining the Star Alliance in April 2010.

A majority of Star members already use all or a portion of the Altea solution. But TAM isn't taking any half-measures. The Brazilian operator will use Altea to manage its entire reservations, inventory and departure control processes, representing a complete operational transformation for the airline.

Accomplishing this transition isn't easy and TAM and Amadeus have been working for months with employees to make it as seamless as possible. Their hard work has borne fruit. A cut-over to the new system is expected to occur by the end of the year, a record for a carrier of this size and complexity, says Amadeus vice-president airline IT Julia Sattel.

Having Altea in place will also position TAM to take advantage of opportunities for generating fresh revenue streams as in-flight entertainment and connectivity (IFE&C) technology advances. For example, by using customer profiles - care of Altea - and a robust in-flight connectivity link, TAM may one day be able to customize its passengers' in-flight experience in real time.

Celebrating the TAM/Amadeus partnership from left to right above is TAM vice-president finance and IT Líbano Barroso, TAM vice-president commercial and planning Paulo Castello Branco, Amadeus vice-president airline IT Julia Sattel, Amadeus director global airline IT Jean-Phillippe Mesure and Amadeus director Latin America airline IT Decius Valmorbida.

After four years at the helm of Malaysia Airlines turning round the carrier's fortunes, Idris Jala is moving on having resigned today to take up a post in the Malaysian cabinet. Jala has been appointed minister without portfolio in the Prime Minister's department and as chief executive of the performance management and delivery unit. The former Shell executive took the helm in 2005 and swiftly turned round the the Malaysian carrier's fortunes. He has been replaced by the chief financial officer who worked alongside him during the turnaround, former PriceWaterhouseCoopers executive Azmil Zahruddin.

We featured Jala as the cover interview of Airline Business in April last year and to find out more about his turnaround of the carrier click here.

You can also click here to see our recent video interview with him during the IATA annual general meeting held in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year.

Been to Beijing? Have any top tips? Then please share them with us...

Photo credit: Sipa Press/Rex Features

The 2009 World Routes Development Forum in Beijing is fast-approaching and the Airline Business team will be there, producing three daily papers from the show.

Because time is always tight on these trips, we are putting together a list of Beijing's highlights to share with the Routes delegates.

If you have any insider tips on must-see sights or foods to sample, please let us know.

You can get in touch by responding to this blog post, e-mailing me at victoria.moores@flightglobal.com or by sending a 'tweet' to my VictoriaOnAir Twitter account.

Yesterday Air France-KLM revealed it is has pulled out of the privatisation of CSA Czech Airlines because the economic climate on has "significantly impacted" the airline business.

The SkyTeam giant offers some advice to its Czech partner: "Under such circumstances, Air France-KLM believes that CSA might focus on developing and implementing a stand-alone recovery plan aimed at restoring its profitability."

Czech Airlines chief Radomír Lašák

But it seems Czech Airlines, while understanding Air France-KLM's decision, is not about to take these gentle words of advice lying down.

It rebuffs: "For Czech Airlines - as for other airlines - the only priority for 2009 is to flexibly respond to the market crisis. Czech Airlines trusts that Air France-KLM, as well as Czech Airlines itself, will manage their downsizing processes."

So there.

Amidst the dismal employment statistics released today by the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Hawaiian Airlines is at least giving a glimer of hope by actually expanding its employee ranks.

Hawaiian says it has hired 100 employees -- mechanics, ramp agents and service agents -- during the last few months, and aims to add an additional 170 positions, largely pilots and flight attendants to support operations of its new Airbus A330-200s. The first aircraft is schedueld for delivery in April.

And what does the BTS data show?  US airlines employed 6.3% fewer workers in June compared with a year ago. It's the 12th consecutive monthly decrease in the number of full time employees working at carriers.

So Hawaiian plans to grow its number of employees 7% by early next year. Any bets on how much overall employee ranks will contract by then?

The alert came from that shrewd watcher of airline fortunes Andrew Lobbenberg of RBS: "EZJ transatlantic - ?!" he asked, somewhat incredulously.

Andrew had spotted that if you hover over Basel on easyJet's interactive route map today a blue line appears that blasts out of Switzerland, over Holland and the UK and off across the atlantic.

"Surely not true, but anyway, happy amusement for an August Wednesday," said Andrew.

The blue line shows routes for sale but not yet operating. The standard orange lines are live routes.

Intrigued I rang easyJet's press office for guidance. Was the carrier taking a leaf out of Ryanair's book and going low-cost long-haul?

Alas no. The line was meant to have gone and stopped at Dusseldorf, Germany we were told. Why it flew off across the atlantic, in what looked a nice deliberate arc, nobody really knows.

Look soon as I am not sure how quickly easyJet's web team will fix it!

And, looking a bit further I see easyJet doesn't fly to Dusseldorf today at all - perhaps they meant Dortmund, which is nearby and one of easyJet's bases. Alternatively perhaps easyJet is planning a base at Dusseldorf?

I need to call them again....

The current financial woes are making everyone look again at long-established practices across their industries, and here's one cost-cutting development in the publishing world with an airline impact. The UK's Guardian News & Media group (GN&M), publisher of the The Guardian and the Sunday weekly The Observer amongst others, has decided to abandon the distribution of "bulks", papers that are given to hotels and airlines for a nominal fee and offered to readers for free. Newspaper publishers use the bulks to tempt new readers for the papers, and around 12,000 and 20,000 copies of The Guardian and The Observer respectively will be stripped out under the move by GNM

"In short, dropping this traditional and, in our view, outmoded practice is a win-win move," says GN&M director and general manager for newspapers Joe Clark. "We hope that others will follow our lead."  So the question is will others follow suit, and if so, what does this mean for complimentary broadsheet newspapers on board?

For more on the bulk issues facing UK newspapers, check out these links from mediaweek and a blog by UK newspaper commentator Roy Greenslade.

GN&M axes newspaper bulks to increase transparency 

Hooray! At last the Guardian group agrees with me and ditches bulks

It's a landmark of sorts: JetBlue Airways has become the first airline to get over one million people following its Twitter social networking output.

Yesterday it was at 993,000 or thereabouts - today at just gone 0900 GMT it stood at 1,000,215.

This is remarkable growth in itself. In February it had 26,000 followers.

JetBlue is easily the biggest airline on Twitter - and many airlines are joining. Tell me if I'm wrong but I think Southwest Airlines, which is growing strongly too with 418,000 followers, is the second largest.

Even in the big wide world these are big numbers. The most popular Twitter globally is somebody called Ashton Kutcher with over 3 milllion followers. Got to say I've got no idea who this is, but then I don't live in the USA and have low exposure to celebrity culture.

Other big Twitterers are found on Twitterholic.

JetBlue is also breaking out its Twitter. It has introduced JetBlue Cheeps, which offers via Twitter cheap fares on a Monday. This already has over 21,000 followers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bottom line findings from the new Barclaycard Commerical Business Travel Survey suggest the dire economic climate is far outweighing environmental concerns as a factor in cutting down business travel. Barclaycard's 13th annual travel survey, covering 2,200 respondents attitude to business travel as of December 2008, showed of the 15% of business travellers who anticipated travelling less this year, three out of five respondents (57%) are doing this in response to declining business or cost issues and only one per cent as a result of a company environmental policy.  The 15% expecting to travel less this year compares to 7% who expected to travel less in the previous year's survey.

For more from this year's survey click here

And check out some of our recent stories on ailing business travel demand below

Corporate travel outlook grim

'Boondoogle' image fears hit corporate travel