July 2012 Archives

Since his appointment last year, Air France chief executive Alexandre de Juniac's role has not seemed dissimilar to that of his compatriot Philippe Petit, a high-wire performer famous for his remarkable balancing routine.

In his efforts to reduce labour costs as part of a restructure de Juniac has walked a tightrope between appeasing shareholders and the French government which owns a 15% stake in the airline.

Yet with a new labour agreement already in place with ground staff and encouraging signs that its pilots will accept a new deal proposed by the SkyTeam carrier, de Juniac can afford to feel that his own balancing act is progressing well.

Clear evidence was given at the Air France-KLM group half-year financial results presentation in Paris that the Transform 2015 restructuring programme is reducing costs. Staff levels at the group have fallen by 2.2% within a year from 106,400 to 104,100 and another 2,000 employees will have left by the end of 2012. Most of those departures will be from the French carrier.

Most pleasing for de Juniac is that his achievements have come without major issues with Air France's employees, nor has it been necessary to make the forced redundancies many observers thought were inevitable. "You all disbelieved me, saying I was saving redundancies until after the election, that's not true, [Nicolas] Sarkozy said nothing [about staff lay-offs] ," he told journalists over lunch after the presentation in Paris.

So far de Juniac is advancing unfalteringly along his own high-wire. But he is still only halfway across. 

We've been busy pulling together our annual World Airline Rankings for the latest issue of Airline Business - our annual survey of the movers and shakers of the airline industry based on the financial and traffic results for 2011. And our designer Gareth Burgess has brought to life the maps from the print magazine into a cool interactive graphic to provide a region by region breakdown of the year.

Competition continues to step up in the big growth market in Indonesia as AirAsia today announced plans, in co-operation its Indonesian partners, is acquiring local carrier Batavia. It strengthens AirAsia's presence in a market where it is already present through Indonesia AirAsia - in which it holds a 49% stake. Indonesia AirAsia currently operates 20 aircraft carrying 5 million passengers in 2011. Batavia operates 33 aircraft - a mix of Boeing 737s, Airbus A320s and A330s. AirAsia says combined the airlines will fly 14 million passengers.

Whatever price Middle East Airlines negotiated for those newly-ordered Airbus A320neos, it probably didn't involve part-payment in fruit.

Which wasn't the case in 1966 when BAC was desperately trying to flog a batch of Super VC10s to MEA in a bid to attract sales from other overseas customers - even Czechoslovakia.

"If...we lose the Middle East Airlines contract, it seems very likely that we shall have to abandon any hope of selling the Super VC10 in world markets," was the UK minister of aviation's pessimistic prognosis, contained in a memorandum buried in the National Archives.

MEA insisted on a £2.67 million price-tag for each jet, the lowest figure to which BAC would agree, plus generous payment terms including a 10-year interest-free loan.

Not content with paying peanuts for the VC10s it also demanded arrangements for the sale of Lebanese apples in the UK amounting to "at least 20% of the value of the aircraft".

While the government wouldn't agree to a special apple quota, the document reveals that BAC found an importer which would use part of the global quota to bring in Lebanese apples.

"We may well have protests from traditional suppliers and attempts to raise the global quota," the memorandum warns. "We should try to avoid doing this, because it would create difficulties with our home apple growers, but we might in the end be forced to."

There was much excitement and anticipation at Farnborough around Boeing Commercial's return to the air-display circuit after almost three decades. And rightly so, as Capts Mike Bryan and Randy Neville flew excellent displays with the Qatar Airways 787 that - dare I say - upstaged the superb manoeuvres we've all got accustomed to from Airbus at all the major air shows.

Boeing has consciously abstained from air-show display flying since the mid-1980s. Perhaps it was realising it couldn't compete with its rival after seeing Airbus steal the show at Farnborough 1986 with that impressive display by the A300 fly-by-wire demonstrator.

 I remember watching Airbus test pilot Gordon Corps fly that big twinjet at what at the time seemed like ludicrously high attitudes and slow speeds (above), and wondering when it would drop out of the sky. This routine would of course become the norm for Airbus's air-show display flying once the FBW A320 arrived the following year at Le Bourget.

Two years prior to that Farnborough A300 FBW demo, I saw Boeing's 737-300 demonstrator (above) fly in the display there - that 1984 appearance marked the new CFM56-powered twinjet's UK debut. Little did I know that it would be another 28 years before I saw a Boeing airliner displaying!

The story goes that Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker told his friends in Seattle that his first 787 would be at this year's Farnborough and he wanted it to be displayed. "Boeing airliners don't fly air displays" was the response, which was clearly the wrong answer.

But Al Baker doesn't give up easily, and when Boeing couldn't find any compelling reason not to participate, it relented to its customer's demands. And what it created was a truly entertaining display for a big jet which includes a 70 degree/2g turn, touch-and-go and down-wind landing.

And I think the success of the effort means we can expect to see Boeing back as a regular in the air-show skies from now on...

Click here to watch the 787 display video

 

Malaysia Airlines' shiny new Airbus A380 made its debut this morning at Heathrow's Terminal 4, after introduction on the carrier's flagship Kuala-Lumpur-London service.

The new 494 seater is operating one of the airline's two daily services between the cities on an initial three-times weekly frequency. The A380 will go daily from mid-August when the second aircraft arrives. This machine will be on display all next week at the Farnborough air show.

 

MAS has configured its A380s with a three-class layout, comprising eight first, 66 business and 420 economy seats.

The first-class cabin is in the traditional slot on the A380, in the forward main-deck area. Business is on the upper deck (pictured, above)., with the economy cabins split between the main and rear upper decks. All the cabins debut new on-board product offerings, including what MAS claims is the widest first-class seat in service (pictured, bottom).

Interestingly, economy passengers with children will be discouraged from booking the upper-deck seats until all the main-deck places are occupied. Apparently there is concern that noisy kids will disturb business-class passengers (children will, of course, be permitted to book seats in the business cabin).

The MAS group CEO AJ Yahya says that a total of four A380s will be delivered this year, with the final two arriving in 2013. Other early destinations earmarked for the aircraft include Sydney, Tokyo Narita and Beijing.

The MAS A380s, which will replace all nine of the airline's Boeing 747-400s by March next year, had originally been planned with a premium economy cabin on the upper deck. These were replaced with around two more rows of business seats, says Yahya. "We took premium economy out because we thought it would be easier for us to sell business class, and we think we can manage the yield better through business class," he says.

After a morning on the ground at drizzly LHR, MAS's new A380 left T4 fully loaded for its first London-KL service just after mid-day, operating flight MH003.