Fuel hedging. Hard to understand and hard to get right - especially in the past year with prices as volatile as they have been.
As ever when people are trying to second guess the market the potential for error is large. But who have thought fuel hedging would have become so critical and topical as it has been in the past months.
The potential problem posed by infectious viral disease pandemics was highlighted during his introductory speech by former IATA director general Pierre Jeanniot at the opening of the World AIr Transport Forum here in Paris.
Jeanniot said that a year on from the 2007 Forum, where the talk was all about aviation's impact on the environment, pandemics were "another bête noir to worry about - they are a hidden problem".
Today's air transport system allows "worldwide infectious death" to circle the globe in a matter of hours potentially with devasating effect, he said.
Little has been done to develop effective drugs to combat these diseases, said Jeanniot, who bemoaned the amount of research going on in this field.
It is with this in mind that he is becoming the chairman of an international not-for-profit consortium called the Foundation on Antivirals - FAV - to invest in research to combat this problem.
Honorary patrons of the foundation are former French president Jacques Chirac and former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien.
Iran is a country from which very little information about it's air transport industry emerges. So, when in an interview with Amadeus the other day they tell me they've sold one of their Pioneer reservation platforms to an Iranian low-cost start-up I got very interested.
They kindly passed on the website details of the airline, which is called easeon air. I will reserve judgement about the name. No, in fact I won't, it's plain rubbish isn't it.
Apparently the carrier will begin operating later this year, but I only have this second hand so if any of you know better please tell me. Amadeus said they are migrating easeon to Pioneer at the moment.
The site tells us the carrier will fly domestically and to the UAE and will be the country's first LCC. Tehran will be its base and it will be privately owned.
My colleague at sister media outlet Air Transport Intelligence first go a sniff of an LCC in Iran a couple of years ago. Here's what David Kaminski wrote back then:
Iran said to approve first low-cost carrier
London (10Jan06, 16:02 GMT, 126 words)
Investors in Reports from Izan Air's director general, identified as Hashem Afsarian, is cited in Iranian media as suggesting that the airline would use Boeing 737-300/400 aircraft. It would start services with three jets and increase its fleet to five within the first year. Reports add that the carrier would offer fares about 10% lower than those of other carriers in the country. Izan Air suggests that it would operate to cities such as
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
So there you have and you read it here first. Fill free to add more details to our scanty knowledge of easeon air (not easy to write) and if you are from easeon do get in touch and tell us more about yourselves.
I'm afraid this is a pretty sick blog if you are a lover of the airline industry for I can report that Irish gambling website PaddyPower (www.paddypower.com) is taking bets on which airline is going to go bust next.
Now I like a flutter at the races now and then but I can't bring myself to put a little wager on the likelihood of FlyGlobespan, SkyEurope, Spanair etc etc going pop. That is even if I could, which I can't from my office as this gaming site is filtered out by our big brother web monitor, as it should be.
You might have to check out PaddyPower at home as I did to get the following prices!
In our Comment piece in the May issue we talked about the previous month being cruel - it was the month when several carriers went to the wall (Aloha, ATA, Skybus and Oasis Hong Kong).
We went on to say that "as far as the airline industry is concerned it is a month when the cruelty may only have just begun".
As the summer faded the axe fell on Irish and UK leisure carriers Futura and XL Airways. UK/Canadian carrier Zoom had succumbed a couple of weeks earlier. The list of casualties grows.
In his conference call yesterday to unveil yet another downgrade in the industry's financial forecast, IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani was unusually mild in this comments about airports.
Usually they get a good "basta" or two, and some good old monopoly bashing.
The stick was wielded less ficiously than before I thought. Although he said "our partners need to bite the bullet" on being more efficient and helping airlines through this difficult time, the response from airports was a "bit disappointing".
IATA has written to 134 airports and 66 air navigation service providers (ANSPs) asking them to help contribute to the troubles airlines are finding themselves in (these providers suffer too of course if traffic falls). This is essentially a plea for price cuts. No harm in asking is there?
We are going to blow our own trumpet a little bit here - so apologies in advance!
Airline Business has just published our 2008 World Airline Ranking - it is, as you can imagine, a major effort, collecting financial and traffic data from the globe's leading carriers. The result, we claim, is the industry's most independent and comprehensive ranking.
Now some carriers are not all that keen to give us this information - Iran Air, Aerolineas Argentinas and Mexicana for example. This is for a variety of reasons: perhaps their financial figures are not finalised, perhaps they don't even know, perhaps they are privately held and are not inclined to tell us (if you know do tell us).
So, sometimes, we produce an estimate. This work is performed by our data team under the expert guidance of Antonio Panariello. He uses plenty of smoke and mirrors and guesswork of course, but mostly bases the estimates on previous trends, traffic growth etc.
It was with some pleasure that Antonio can report that our estimate for the revenues of Philippine Airlines for 2007 of $1.5 billion, a rise of 8.3% over the 2006 data, was spot on, according to preliminary results just issued by PAL.
Well done Antonio! We will report on his team's continuing success (or otherwise) as more results come out for the likes of Air India, El Salvador's TACA or Gulf Air.
Click here for the commentary that gives an overview of the World Airline Rankings.
To buy the World Airline Rankings issue of Airline Business contact Laura Wood of our team at laura.wood@flightglobal.com
Or to get the World Airline Rankings on spreadsheet contact Daniel Sedman at daniel.sedman@flightglobal.com
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