Kerry Ezard: August 2008 Archives

Consolidation activity appears to be hotting up in Europe. The latest is that Lufthansa has decided to put its fingers in more pies with a plan to acquire a 45% stake in Brussels Airlines parent SN Airholding.

The German carrier also confirmed to Airline Business sister publication Air Transport Intelligence recently that it is interested in the available stake in Austrian Airlines. Lufthansa has already acquired Swiss and appears to be intent on spreading its wings further to solidify its position as a European heavyweight.

Meanwhile, the future of Alitalia could also finally become clear later today with the Italian government set to make an announcement on a re-launch of the beleaguered carrier. The big question is, will Air France-KLM still want a piece of the pie?

An elderly woman in Sweden is reported to have accidentally checked herself in as baggage after misunderstanding what to do at the baggage belt.

According to the report, the 78-year-old climbed on to the luggage belt at Stockholm Arlanda Airport and was whisked away down the chute where she was met by baffled baggage handlers.

I find it hard to believe that nobody was around to witness her mistake and escort her off the baggage belt before she disappeared behind the curtain.

Luckily the woman is reported not to have suffered any injuries and later caught her flight to Germany. Maybe she just couldn't face queuing for security and instead decided to chance her luck with a more direct route.

It may seem ironic, being one of the fastest growing airlines in the world with a huge amount of aircraft on order, but Emirates is touting its commitment to protecting the environment.

In a press release, the carrier says it has adopted "a new environmental policy for the Emirates Group, a global staff awareness campaign and internal goals to reduce energy consumption and waste, as well as increase recycing and training".

The programme is entitled Emvironment, which at first I thought was a spelling error but no, it's a good old amalgamation of two words. Catchy. You can read more about the airline's emvironmental commitments here. 

Heavily involved in all this is Emirates vice-president public and environmental affairs Andrew Parker, who says: "From an environmental perspecitve, Emirates has much to be proud of, particularly our advanced fleet and use of technology to minimise our footprint.

"While much of this work has been underway for many years, the new Emvironment programme will provide a strategic underpinning to further improve our environmental performance."

Emirates is not the only airline shouting about its commitment to saving the earth - see our recent feature "Seen to be green" to see what others are doing to try and hammer home this message.

The UK Competition Commission's long-awaited provisional ruling on BAA's ownership of seven UK airports is harsher than many expected, but is arguably what's needed to improve conditions at London's airports.

The CC today said that two of BAA's three London airports should be sold, along with either Edinburgh or Glasgow.

It's highly unlikely that BAA will let go of Heathrow, so it looks like Gatwick and Stansted will be looking for new owners next year.

Airlines that use BAA's airports and have been complaining for some time about the high fees and lack of service that they attribute to monopoly ownership have predictably welcomed today's provisional ruling.

EasyJet congratulates the ruling, but says the break-up is only worthy of a bronze medal, whereas the gold medal would go to better regulation.

And Ryanair, which has been scathing in its relentless attacks on Stansted, reminded everybody today that it had "long called for the break-up of this abusive monopoly, which ignores the needs of airlines and the travelling public and charges rip-off prices for abysmal services".

As anyone who has travelled through either Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted can attest, the level of service often leaves a lot to be desired. Overcrowded, understaffed and unpleasant are three words that come to my mind. Hopefully things will improve when all three airports are competing with one another under separate ownership.

However, it looks like BAA does not plan to give up without a fight. In a statement today, the airports operator, which is owned by Spain's Ferrovial, said it will "continue to point out to the Commission the many areas where we believe its analysis is flawed and its remedies would be disproportionate and counter-productive".

The CC will publish its final report on the matter in the first quarter of 2009. What are your thoughts? Has the CC made a fair assessment? And would things improve under separate ownership?

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!