Europe: January 2007 Archives

As the bidders lined up for Alitalia on Monday - there were 11 in total - an intrepid journalist at Reuters digging into their backgrounds found to his surprise that a humble Italian school teacher had sneaked his way onto the shortlist.
The teacher, Fabio Scaccia, described his fake plan to buy Alitalia as a "citizen's protest". "I've followed the Alitalia crisis for the past 20 years," the 46-year-old told Reuters. "I wanted to show that a company like Alitalia should not be allowed to remain in a state of crisis for so long," he said.
Scaccia joined the list with bidders like Texas Pacific and leading Italian bank UniCredit.

I think it is safe to predict that this will not be the last left field story to emerge from the Alitalia sale process. Some would say the entire Alitalia saga has more than a touch of a Feydeau farce about it.

UK-based Jet2's claim that its roll out of Mezzo Movies' hand-held in-flight entertainment system is "a first for the low-cost industry" will be met with some surprise by fellow carriers that have been providing a similar service for some time.
Airlines currently offering rival Digecor's portable video device include Australia's low-cost Virgin Blue, and European no-frills giants easyJet and Ryanair both trialled the Digecor system for a period in 2005, but decided not to roll the service out due to a disappointing level of passenger take-up.
Jet2 thinks its offering will be better received by travellers because it will offer TV shows, music videos and CDs, which are better suited to ultra-short flight times of an hour or two - rather than the full-length movies previously trialled that had not finished by the time the equipment had to be turned off for landing.
At the other end of the market, rival transatlantic premium startups MaxJet (Digecor) and Silverjet (Mezzo) are both offering hand-held IFE systems. Most recent sign-ups to the Digecor system are Aeroflot and Kenya Airways, joining carriers from as far afield as Alaska Airlines and Singaporean low-cost JetStar Asia.
Clearly the cost of investment of such systems is considerably less than the installation of seat-back screens and so appeals to low-cost carriers looking to add a frill or two. But live television in flight is gaining ground with a number of carriers - from low-cost JetBlue to fast-growing Etihad. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

In every interview they conduct at the moment, airline chiefs are being asked with monotonous regularity who they would like to buy, team up with, or be acquired by. But the ever thoughtful Wolfgang Mayrhuber, head of Germany's Lufthansa, has sounded a cautious word: "The damage a wrong decision can cause is greater than the damage of a missed opportunity," he told the Financial Times.
Such thinking is not uncommon among senior industry figures. And such wise words will be being heeded by those peering into the murky books of Italy's flag carrier Alitalia.
The country's government is searching for a white-knight for its beleagured airline. Now that is a tough job. Saddled with debt, terrible labour relations and antiquated working practices, as well as a fiercely competitive domestic market, Alitalia has all the makings of Europe's next network carrier failure. It expects to make a huge loss of €380 million ($490 million) in 2006.
Rome is determined not to let Alitalia collapse, and has backed it up with state cash in the past. It is asked for bidders interested in a taking a 30% stake in Alitalia. They have until today (Monday 29th January) to make an offer
But recent calls by potential suitors to have a free hand in restructuring the airline will fall on deaf ears. Government will to allow any management team over the past decade to take the drastic action needed to reshape Alitalia for the 21st Century has been sorely lacking. What is different now I wonder?

Hardly a day seems to go by without some member of the Flight Group editorial stable of Airline Business, Flight International, Air Transport Intelligence or Flightglobal.com being asked to provide "expert" comment on an aviation industry issue.
Our journalists do as many as can reasonable can, if hand-on-heart we know enough about the subject to comment sensibly.
I did a show this week made by a UK-based consumer TV programme called Watchdog. It was probing the baggage chaos at London Heathrow over the Christmas period - some 25,000+ bags were lost, and British Airways, once again, was in the firing line.
BA didn't want to put someone up on the programme, so they go for the next best thing, kind of, a journo.
Thing is, yours truly felt in the firing line himself as presenter Nicky Campbell, in the pre-interview chat to get the questions straight in my head booms: "So why has BA made such a mess?"
Well, but, mumble, I stutter. Remember it's a just-in-time system, not designed to hold bags etc etc, I haltingly try and educate Campbell on the realities of baggage handling systems. "C'mon," rants Campbell, who struts around his studio, "I represent the consumer, I don't care about BA."
So, we came to an accommodation I suppose. I wasn't going to diss BA outright. Clearly the bag mountain and dealing with it was a mess. Did BA deal with it as best they could? Probably not, but from what I know repatriating bags is a hellish job, not one airlines generally throw money at and typically an area where communication with customers is poor.
I cannot link the clip because it is not on the BBC site, but what I said was all airports and all airlines lose bags, no surprise there. This volume of bags was remarkable, and BA clearly has found it tough to deal with the backlog.
Message - either take the train, or if you have to fly make sure you put labels inside and outside your bag. Otherwise your bag could end up being auctioned off, contents and all.
Yes contents and all. Please, please check out this auction house which sells off unidentified bags. A typical lot: No. 268. Large black expanding trolley case cont ladies assorted clothing.
Hurry, other people's clothes to buy.

Every year, around this time, British Airways hosts a press gathering at London's Langans restaurant to mark Burns night (the presumed birthday of Scottish icon Robert Burns). "We've provided you with more than our fair share of column inches," said the airline's chief executive Willie Walsh, addressing the press corps. More often than not, these column inches came from high profile stories that BA rarely prompted or had any control over.
Walsh listed what his management team has had to deal with over the past year:
* The foiled UK terrorism plot
* Security rules changes
* The polonium 210 issue
* Unprecedented interest in our uniform regulations
* The worst fog in a generation, and to wrap it all up,
* One aircraft broke a light on a runway in Miami.
Walsh recounted a comment from his press chief Paul Marston: "We're no longer the world's favourite airline, we're the world's favourite headline."
And Walsh's latest challenge is to avert a cabin crew strike after unions voted just the day before to take strike action over changes to working conditions and pensions.
The Irishman was in typically combative mood over this development. "We operate in a brutally competitive industry," he said. That environment means BA must lower costs to keep competitive.
"Nobody looks to BA as a benchmark for costs and efficiency," he said. "I cannot accept anybody in this business who says we cannot talk to you about change." Unions "have to accept the way to address these issues is to sit down and negotiate".

SkyTeam's Air France-KLM will probably be moving to its new London Heathrow home at the airport's Terminal 4 at the end of 2008, around nine months after British Airways occupies Terminal 5.
Air France will move from its current location at Terminal 2 to join merger partner KLM at T4. So what is Air France-KLM expecting to get for its money at T4 and by when? For Air France-KLM the "main question is do they share our priority of giving us a competitive tool at T4?" says Air France general manager UK & Ireland Christine Ourmieres. The they in question is BAA.
What Air France-KLM, and indeed any carrier at Heathrow that is not in the sparkling new T5 wants is not to be stuck with the airport's dingy old terminals for too long. They want to see solid and swift plans for revamping and refurbishing the lower number terminals.
Indeed, this is the commitment the SkyTeam Alliance partners obtained from BAA when they signed a memorandum of understanding to occupy T4 last June, says Ourmieres.
She is however, well aware of the tough task BAA faces in delivering T5 and then getting its Heathrow East rebuilding of Terminals 1 and 2 off the ground. "The challenge is to do all this at the same time," she says. In addition there is the added pressure of delivering an all-new Heathrow in time for London's Olympic Games that take place in the UK capital in 2012.
Air France-KLM is in on-going discussions with BAA over its investment plans for T4. There is "open communication" between the two sides. "They know what we want and I'm confident," she says of the hoped for outcome.
However, her view that "there is no time to relax" is no understatement.

While other fast-growing carriers are busily recruiting flight crew - in some cases poaching them from rival carriers - Virign Atlantic is advertising for 100 in-flight beauty therapists to join the 250 currently working alongside the cabin crew in the carrier's Upper Class cabin.

Passengers enjoying the Upper Class experience with Virgin can choose between treatments such as Back in the Clouds, Hot Hands and Handsome Hands Manicure.
The treatment takes place behind a curtain at the front of the forward cabin, where there is a dedicated seat.
The only drawback - no pun intended - that I found when I experienced the service onboard an Airbus A340 on Virgin's inaugural service to Dubai in early 2006 was that the blissed-out passenger enjoying a head massage is facing fellow travellers - and is revealed to them each time a member of the cabin crew opens the curtain en route to the galley.
Slots are negotiated with the beauty therapist on boarding, and if there are none left you are given a voucher giving you priority on your return flight. You can also choose whether or not to be woken for your treatment if asleep.
The carrier says this recruitment drive is to keep pace with expansion plans for this year, which include the introduction of services to Chicago in April, Nairobi in June and Mauritius in October, as well as an extra daily service to Washington during the summer season.
The service is available on all flights in and out of London Heathrow.

The yawning gap between high-cost air and low-cost sea freight is set to be bridged if the FastShip transportation system is all it claims. Advertising to sell capacity on its proposed service in the January issue of Airline Business, the company is planning a high-speed transatlantic link between the ports of Philadelphia in the USA and Cherbourg in France in just five days port to port. This timescale would enable New York to Paris delivery for full containers in just six days.
This, says FastShip, "will enable door-to-door delivery times comparable to standard airfreight at half the cost, aimed at the fast-growing international time-definite delivery/logistics segment of the market".
Roland Bullard, president and chief executive of FastShip, says: "Classification for the design of the vessels is in place and we are in the process of finalising the capital raise. The forward sale of capacity on the service is part of that. I expect there will be a multinational grouping of strategic and financial investors in place by the end of 2007. After that there will be 12-18 months of detailed design work with first operation some 12 months after that."
The company will operate the service with three high-speed "JetShip" vessels, each with 10,000 tonnes capacity, and anticipates a 98% on-time port arrival rate. It will also use specialised terminals to load and unload the ships and foresees a complete turnaround of the vessel "within six hours of port arrival", compared with up to 24 hours for traditional crane operations.
The vessels - the first of their type - will be built in a German shipyard by Oslo, Norway-based Aker Group.

The JetShip burns substantially less fuel per freight tonne than a Boeing 747 freighter, adds FastShip, " so the JetShip's cost advantages over air freight improve as fuel prices rise".
FastShip says it is planning to augment its initial North Atlantic route with services on other new trade routes such as the transpacific and intra-Asia.
Could this be a realistic alternative to costly intercontinental air freight?

It is becoming something of a tradition for Lufthansa to announce major recruitment drives at the turn of the year. This year is no exception and proves once again the resilience of the German flag carrier and its determination to expand even as the industry's growth globally begins to brake.
It is taking on 3,000 new staff this year. This is on top of the 2,500 new employees it recruited in 2006, and will take its global workforce to some 94,000 people, with a staggering 34,000 of them outside Germany.
The jobs suit a wide range of professions - and are advised and promoted via its impressive careers website - from 2,000 airport jobs at its Frankfurt and Munich hubs and including 1,200 flight attendants. Another 240 trainee pilots are to book into its Flight Training Centre in Bremen.
Lufthansa is proud of its attractiveness as an employer. It says that in a recent study conducted for the US business magazine Forbes by the New York Reputation Institute, more than 30,000 respondents from 25 countries voted Lufthansa among the top three most popular employers from 600 globally active companies.
Lufthansa takes recruiting very seriously and boasts of its flexibility with a variety of working-time models. For example, a seasonal job for flight attendants between March and October. Staff in passenger service jobs at the airports can also opt to work part-time for three or four days a week.
To find out if Lufthansa is the place for you, or simply to pinch some good ideas of how to attract new staff check out that careers portal.