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Recently in Strategies and tactics Category

Air Azul's blue-skies plan

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airazul-2.jpgYou would think the nation has a limited supply of really underserved airport markets, but Allegiant Air has demonstrated that the states have plenty of Grand Forks and Billings. Now comes Air Azul, a tiny turboprop operator, and its very big plans to mimic Allegiant - up to a point.
It has arranged with Sun Country Airlines, the Minneapolis-based carrier that's trying to get out of bankruptcy, to operate public charter flights between big cities on the East Coast and a scattering of service-hungry cities in the Midwest. The carrier, which will use a Sun Country Boeing 737-800, "sees the how the Allegiant model worked. We're slightly different because we're linking underserved markets like Toledo or South Bend, Indiana, with major metropolitan areas, rather than with leisure resorts, but we're clearly inspired by the success that Allegiant has had," says Brian Burling, the vice president of Air Azul. The company announced this week that it will serve South Bend linking it with Newark Liberty, near New York, three days a week. It also announced service between Toledo, Ohio and Rockford, Ill., and Newark, three days a week, and plans thrice weekly service between Newark, and Lansing, Michigan.

 

O'Leary: we weren't kidding about airport check-in.

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Ryanair-Check-In.jpgWe didn't believe him when Michael O'Leary came out and began moving his lips. He was yakking about how Ryanair was going to start charging people to use its on-board lavatories (oh the headlines!) and then said while it was improving customer comfort this way, his airline would get rid of airport check-in counters. Everybody would have to check in on line, O'Leary said.
Well, he was serious, at least about the airport part. Ryanair now officially plans to eliminate its airport check-in by October. You will have to check in from home, and the airport will only offer a drop desk where you can check your bags (for a fee).


 

Someone takes Ryanair's O'Leary seriously

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Ryanair__Michael_O__206464c.jpgSo, is he kidding? Or, who (m) does he think he is kidding? He is Michael O'Leary, the head of Ryanair, Europe's largest really cheap carrier. O'Leary went onto BBC to tell a morning 'chat show' that maybe Ryanair would perhaps possibly begin charging its passengers to use the lavatories on board its Boeing 737s. O'Leary had a more or les straight face as he chatted with the a.m. show, but then again he usually does.
While few are taking his potty talk seriously, O'Leary also said the other day that Ryanair would be doing away with check-in counters at all of its airports, a statement that he is still standing by - and which he repeated in the course of the BBC interview. We spoke to a few US and Asian carriers that adhere to the same really low-cost philosophy that Ryanair champions, and we found one that did not outright dismiss the O'Leary counter-culture concept. At Spirit Airlines, the 'ultra low-cost carrier' based near Miami, "we're not laughing at them," says chief marketing officer Barry Biffle.

Tweets tell tales of airline disaster, short and very fast

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jkrums203.jpgThis is not the kind of Tweet you want. Pretty much every airline, major and minor, uses Twitter, the short-message, mini- microblogging sort of email service. They 'tweet' when they have sales or when there's a tie up at an airport; they also listen when they're Tweeted, good or (usually) bad. But there's a new type of Twitter that really disproves the marketer's old myth that it doesn't matter what they say so long as they get the name right, and that's disaster Tweets.
When a Turkish Airlines Boeing landed short and broke apart at Amsterdam's Schipol, the first word to the public was a Tweet, sent out by a fellow who lives near the airport. "Looking at a crashed aeroplane near Schipol," he wrote within minutes of the Flight 1951's impact - which killed at least nine people. His postings, at 140 characters, maximum, were running ahead of the Internet, and Twitter was soon outpacing even that fast-paced electronic communications system once known as the web.

Travelport touting new agency desktop for all brands

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wil1_thumb.jpg Travelport, Tantalizing. Travelport is planning something called a universal desktop, which if it lives up to its promises will offer almost everything they need to travel agencies in one nice little box. Gordon Wilson, the Brit to the right who heads up Travelport's GDS, the former Galileo, spent a little time telling Left Field about this new tool, which will be able to wrap into one 'box' access to all of the Global Distribution Systems, including rivals Sabre and Amadeus. This is something of a holy grail for agents, both retail 'Main Street' types and more importantly the corporate agencies. Agents often become tied to one or another GDS through its desktop presence in their offices. But one screen to search means faster ways to find deals, comparison shop, and keep the client content, if not happy. 

Southwest enters a different Boston

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HMN_map.jpgThey say that that Southwest has run out of low-hanging fruit, out of secondary airports like Oakland, Cal., or Long Island, NY's MacArthur, and that's why it's going into real big airports where they have lots of old-fashioned airlines, airports like Minneapolis/St. Paul, where it starts flights in March.

True, but only up to a point. Consider the LUVline's plan to enter Boston's Logan later this year. It hasn't chosen an exact date and it hasn't named routes yet, but Southwest is entering a very different Logan than the one it shunned back in the 1990s when it began flights to Providence, RI, (1996) and Manchester, NH, (1998), straddling Boston with two secondary airports offering easier ground access. But since then, Boston is has changed. Not only is the airport easier (or least less difficult) to get to with the finally final completion of the city's 'Big Dig' road project.

Scheduling sessions stump smart-guys, too

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are-you-smarter.jpgA hit TV show in here the States is called 'Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader?' It features grown-ups and panel of kids in the fifth grade; the host then sees who scores better on a general-knowledge quiz. We've watched this show and can proudly report that the answer is, usually we're not. Now comes another quiz that we know we can't do well on, 'Are you Smarter than a Schedule Planner?'

Delta sweetens the Cincy pot

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radialmap.jpgSweetening the pot: So after Delta cut most of the fares at its Cincinnati hub, it waited a few days and then let the other shoe drop. The carrier is now offering a frequent-flyer points bonus for people who fly from CVG to 15 business-type destinations, from Charlotte to Phoenix to Reagan Washington National. (Yes, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson is included.) Flyers who want to get the bonus points have to register and must fly by May 12; they will get 3,000 miles for their first roundtrip flight, moving steadily up the ladder to 10,000 miles for a fifth roundtrip flight.  In the Delta SkyMiles program, it takes 25,000 miles to qualify for a 'free' domestic roundtrip award.

Video-conferencing threat really is real, says Gartner

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 Dr.Strangelove.jpg

It's sort of the like the Cold War, the way people estimate the threat. For years we've heard that videoconferences will put the airlines out of business, that the threat is real and overwhelming. It's sort of like the scene in the classic film Doctor Strangelove (left) where the 'godless, atheistic commies' not only have more missiles than we do but they even have more mine shafts to hide in than we do. "A shaft gap!" exclaims the bad doctor.
Well, they're not atheistic or even godless, but videoconferencing or 'video-telepresence technologies' have come a long way. Now a Gartner Inc. analyst, Steve Prentice, sees this alternative to flying as a real threat. It will grow enough over the next three years that "high-definition video-meeting solutions" will cost the world's airlines some 2.1 million seats a year by 2012. This new, improved, bigger, better and cleaner technology will cost the travel and hospitality industry about $3.5 billion annually, Prentice predicts.

 

Porter probably placing more Q400 orders

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porterair.jpg There's no stopping these guys. Porter Airlines, after struggling for years against anti-noise neighbors and 'entrenched competitors,' is growing and now says that it may well order more Bombardier Q400 turboprops. Its founder and chief executive, Robert Deluce, says that "probably I shouldn't say this because there are Bombardier people here today, but we may be placing an order for more. Some discussions will have to take place first."
Deluce tells the Raymond James Growth Airline conference that the privately held carrier has two options remaining in its original order for 10 firm and 10 options, "and they will soon be spoken for." He praised the turboprop's operating efficiencies, saying that its 30%-40% fuel advantage over jets enabled Porter "to avoid costly fuel hedges." Deluce just told Airline Business that the carrier plans growth in both domestic and transborder routes this year.

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