Asia-Pacific: August 2008 Archives

Ever wanted to bomb along the runway in an airport fire truck and give a mighty blast on the water cannon?

OK, not in a real life incident of course, but for fun?

Now could be the chance, for move over Playstation and Nintendo Wii, Singapore's Aviation Academy has installed the world's first airport fire-fighting vehicle driving simulator.

It comes equipped with a full motion simulator - just like its aircraft simulator cousins - and can simulate day and night driving.

The sim was developed with Chartered Asia Technology Enterprise, a Singapore-based firm that specialises in airport-related technology and services.

Having failed to be named as the successor to long-time Qantas head Geoff Dixon, it comes as no surprise to this watcher of airline boardroom rotation to see its chief financial officer Peter Gregg deciding to quit the Australian carrier.

Gregg, 53, (above) missed out to fast-rising Alan Joyce, the young Irish-Australian who has led its low-cost subsidiary Jetstar to immediate profitability and strong brand recognition.

Joyce was named as Dixon's replacement a couple of weeks ago.

It's not all gold medals and national anthems, you know.

Some airlines are actually seeing a marked downturn in their traffic to China specifically because of the Olympic Games, which are currently being held in Beijing.

I learned this at a meeting yesterday in London with Finnair chief financial officer Lasse Heinonen and vice-president of financial communications and investor relations Taneli Hassinen.

As the Finnair guys briefed myself and my colleagues, David Kaminski-Morrow of Air Transport Intelligence and Olivier Bonnassies of Commercial Aviation Online, about the latest goings on at the Finnish carrier, we got talking about their strong focus on flights between Europe and Asia.

Here's what Mr Heinonen had to say: "The Olympics have been bad for airlines. Visas have been very hard to obtain, so travel to and from China has been difficult."

He added that Finnair's second-quarter load factors between Europe and Asia were 68%, a decrease of eight percentage points compared to the same time last year, and "China played a major role" in this.

This looks like being yet another stick to beat the airlines with, alongside record high oil prices and a global economic downturn. Still, I shouldn't think "the world's greatest Olympian" Michael Phelps will be losing any sleep over it!