Europe: March 2007 Archives

When a press release came through earlier this week announcing the launch of a low-cost airline called flyforbeans it seemed too funny to be true.

My first reaction was to check out the airline's website to see if it was legit. I wasn't so sure after the website told me: "If you have an urgent media, recruitment or other enquiry, you can e-mail us now at iamfullofbeans@flyforbeans.com and we will respond to you as fast as a runner bean."

But it turned out not to be an early April Fools Day hoax. Indeed aviation consultancy SkyMerlin and former Tiger Airways finance director Tim Lee are leading a new Wales-based company that aims to launch low-cost flights later this year under the name flyforbeans.

The behemoth Airbus A380 has touched down on German soil for the first time, landing at Munich Airport yesterday before departing back to its Toulouse base 5 hours later.

Michael Kerkloh, chief executive at Munich Airport, was naturally effusive: "This is a great day for Munich Airport. We are proud to be hosting a visit by the world's most advanced and largest passenger aircraft."

Stephen Nelson's new broom at the top of BAA is busily sweeping away years of what felt like institutional disregard for its airline customers. Listen, this is a different BAA. He actually rings up airline chief executives on a friday afternoon to discuss issues, problems and opportunities.

"We have top-to-top meetings with a number of our major customers, which are progressing," says Nelson, who was promoted to the hot seat at BAA in mid-July last year. This includes chats with British Airways boss Willie Walsh. These can be firey. "We've said that we agree on things 80% of the time and violently disagree 20% of the time. We know that and now we can get down to doing business," says Nelson.

From the tabloid school of shameless self-promotion comes Ryanair's latest marketing effort. To celebrate the beginning of European Summer Time, Ryanair is offering fares of £9.99 (about $20) on all destinations across Europe.

And how better to promote this offer than with a picture of scantily clad "blonde stunners" on the tarmac in front of a Boeing 737-800.

God love them. Here they are in next to nothing at London Stansted, just as snow retreats from British shores.

As the press release enthuses: "They've got their bikinis, their cocktails and their beach towels, and they're all set to find the sun this summer." Hang on, though. There's no grasshopper or gin sling in their glasses - they're empty.

And look closely at the aircraft and you'll see people are actually boarding it, with no regard for the stunners. Looks like it's business as usual for Ryanair - they wouldn't let their phenomenal 30-minute turnaround time drop, even for this photo shoot.
You've got to hand it to the models though. They are certainly convincing - they almost look happy.

There are only two facts you need to confirm about today's Open Skies agreement between the EU and US.
One: The UK has managed to delay implementation from October 2007 to March 2008. It bowed to pressure from British Airways to the delay so BA could be in the new London Heathrow Terminal 5.
Two: If the second stage of the deal is not signed by the end of 2010, EU states will have to right to reimpose market access restrictions. This was another UK demand. In effect, this means that if the US does not allow the lifting of ownership and control limits on its carriers by then access to Heathrow could be restricted once again.
All the rest of the package has been well flagged.
For reactions to the deal, and announcements on what several carriers intend to do, a simple Google search will give you a blizzard of results.
For the full text of the of the announcement from the UK's Department of Transport and the EC see below.

When you're visiting a new city, surely the best person to show you around is someone who visits regularly. And who'd be better travelled than airline crew? That's the thinking behind two new travel guides put together by the travel crew and pilots from Scandinavian Airlines, SAS Braathens, Spanair, Blue 1 and Air Baltic.

The first, The Crew Guide Escapes, gives locations, hotels and restaurants from around the world that are off the beaten track. With section headings like Room with a View, Sand in Your Toes, Inner Calm, Get Out of Town, Poetry in Motion and Look After Yourself, it's a joy to read, and not just on this particularly grey London day.

The full-page advert has a wispy cloud in the shape of a huge two-fingered V-sign - a British handsign that means either victory of something rather ruder. A pair of jetliners zoom into the sky from the tips of each digit. The colour ad in Monday's Guardian newspaper (one of the UK's serious dailies) apes those of British Airways promoting its New York services.
So what's happening here? What's happening is that environmental lobbyists and activists Greenpeace are having a pop at BA's new service being launched from London to the southern English seaside resort of Newquay. Their message: Take the train instead, it's greener than flying.

The carbon emissions debate is gathering ground in Europe with Lufthansa pledging to introduce a voluntary emissions surcharge on tickets to fight global warming.

But the subtleties of when and how the surcharge is to be implemented are yet to be decided. And a quick call to the Lufthansa press office did little to enlighten us. Reading between the lines, it almost seems as if Lufthansa chief executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber mentioned it in passing to German magazine Der Spiegel and journalists from around the world have been picking up on it ever since.

The surcharge, which Lufthansa stressed was "voluntary", will be introduced over the course of this year, but as yet there is "no fixed date" for its implementation. Lufthansa's press office believed it would be in the form of a link to an organisation which specialises in offsetting carbon emissions.

Lufthansa says the surcharge is a result of passengers asking what they can do to reduce their carbon emissions, but "is is only one thing in Lufthansa's whole programme. Our biggest interest is in what we can do to reduce emissions, like investing in more modern fuel-efficient aircraft."

Well, maybe there's news and maybe there's not. It's hard to tell when stories come across the wire screaming 'breakthrough' and 'landmark' but have no details. That's just what happened the other morning when stories from Brussels - long, fully developed stories, not news flashes - popped up saying that the US and the EC had broken through objections and signed a landmark open skies deal. No details. As they day wore on, few details emerged, and the reactions that came were 'sounds-like reax'. (As in "it sounds like it's OK").

Giovanni Bisignani of IATA said it sounded OK but he'd like to see details, http://www.iata.org, while Jim May of the Air Transport Association said it sounded good and he looked forward to "developing a more complete understanding of what is envisioned". http://www.airlines.org Association of European Airlines Secretary General Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus was more blunt: "Bearing in mind that this is the eleventh round of these talks, it is clear how delicate the negotiating process has been. Some fairly fundamental issues needed to be resolved". http://www.aea.be

When you get reax like that, you know that no one knows what's going on. A few details have emerged but even they are far from detailed; while Fifth and Seventh Freedom rights are involved, the thorny issue of foreign investment in US airlines, the issue that scuttled the last breakthrough landmark deal, remains largely open and to be resolved, as best we can tell.