Miyuru Sandaruwan: February 2012 Archives

Admittedly or not, it is clear that most of the big name LCCs today have adopted some level of connection potential to their networks. It is too significant a revenue stream to be ignored, and implementing a such system - specially internationally - is quite easy. Just schedule the majority of your westbound flights to operate during one half of the day and the eastbound flights during the other half. And you've easily got a basic connectivity potential.
This emerging trend is rapidly closing the ever minimizing gap between full service and low cost carriers.
The connectivity certainly increases the revenue potential for any LCC - and not going to a large scale connectivity oriented hub structure means that they could still keep the costs low. Technological improvements have added the ability of booking connectivity pairs to most reservation systems. The end result is that not only has the connectivy business become more lucrative, but quite easy to implement too.
The lower prices of a LCC connection makes it a better option to the price-conscious traveler; even if there is an extra step of booking two city pairs seperately.
This has opened more chances for those LCCs wishing to move upmarket, and the higher yields will only make that choice more attractive to many. The hybrid-ization of the LCC is not going to stop anytime soon. And the gap between the LCC and the FSC is fast closing.

 Gulf Air from Summer 2012 will be introducing flat bed seats on its Airbus A321 aircraft. The new seating configuration will feature 8 Business Class flat bed seats and 161 Economy class seats. The new aircraft will feature IFE on all classes and will be used to a range of regional routes.

 Airline route network updates, announcements and key events from the week of 20-26 February 2012.

From next week onwards, The Networker will be taking a new direction. Rather than route networks only focused news, posted as they happen, this blog will take a more detailed as well as an interesting aim for content tailored towards the industry peers as well as the aviation enthusiasts. Starting next week, three new segments will be joining this blog's posting schedule..
- Route Changes of Last Week; to be posted on every Monday, this will be a round up of the previous week's route network news, changes and key updates. Very soon, we plan on offering you an email subscription option so that you can have this key data in your inbox right when your work week begins.
-Network of Future; to be posted on every Wednesday, this would be a thought provoking column written mainly for the airline industry executives and network planners. This feature would be mainly discussing about the latest trends of network planning and on improving network performance.
- Codeshare Update; to be posted on every Friday, this would be a listing of the key codeshare activities which took place during the week.

Apart from the above, any airline network news of significant importance, would be posted as they happen as usual.

Looking forward to bringing you even better content - and expecting your valued cooperation as usual!

 Etihad Airways CEO, James Hogan, yesterday announced that the airline shall be launching service to Washington D.C from Abu Dhabi on 31st March 2013, subject to regulatory approval. No schedules for the service are available at the moment.

Who is Varney? And what are the two airlines? These questions may probably arise in your mind if you are not from the US.

 The much awaited first Boeing 737-800 for Southwest Airlines has finally seen daylight (or, actually night-light). The first aircraft, N8301J, was rolled out of Boeing's Renton flight line on Friday. See below for the photos. Note the ETOPS marking on the nose gear door.

Qantas Airways has announced a number of additional route cuts from Summer, as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts. The affected routes include..

- Auckland - Los Angeles, Airbus A330 service
- Singapore - Mumbai, Airbus A330 service

This would cut Qantas' only link with India, although Los Angeles would continue to be served with other direct routings. All of the above changes take place effective 6th May.

The following change will also be in place from the same date..
-Los Angeles - New York route (continuuation of ex Australia route) will be upgraded from Airbus A330 to Boeing 747-400 equipment

The airline would also switch the aircraft on Bangkok and Tokyo Narita routes from June, with Narita being upgraded to a daily Boeing 747-400 while Bangkok will see a downgrade to Airbus A330 equipment.

Emirates Airline from 1st August will be introducing the Airbus A380 on its Dubai - Amsterdam route. This would make it the first scheduled Airbus A380 service into the Netherlands.
The route presently operates with Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.
Schedule is below.

EK147 DXB 0825 - 1330 AMS 388 D
EK148 AMS 1530 - 2359 DXB 388 D

Emirates Airline from 9th July is launching service to Lisbon in Portugal. Service operates daily on board Boeing 777-200ER aircraft.

Schedule:

Ek191 DXB 0915 - 1445 LIS 772 D
EK192 LIS 1755 - 0435+1 DXB 772 D

Qatar Airways from Summer 2012, will be increasing its flights to Kuala Lumpur from Doha, to 17 times a week. The new service will utilize Airbus A330-200 aircraft on all flights. At present, the airline is operating 13 weekly flights on the route on board Airbus A330-300 aircraft.
Four weekly flights of QR624 and three weekly flights of QR622 continue to Phuket. It must be noted however that there are some discrepancies such as a reduced number of departures on the KUL-DOH leg.

Schedule:
QR624 DOH 0130 - 1420 KUL 332 x27
QR622 DOH 0750 - 2040 KUL 332 x35
QR620 DOH 2000 - 0850+1 KUL 332 D

QR623 KUL 0330 - 0600 DOH EQV 135
QR621 KUL 1020 - 1250 DOH 332 D
QR625 KUL 2110 - 2340 332 x27

 Turkish Airlines, from 28th May, is adding its third daily flight to New York JFK. The new flight will operate on board Airbus A330-300 aircrat. TK's other two daily New York flights operate on board Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

Royal Jordanian Airlines has announced that it will be suspending service to five destinations in a move to cut costs and offset high fuel prices.
Service to following destinations are to be suspended in March and April
-Brussels
-Munich
-Al Ain

Two other gulf cities to be closed will be announced soon.

The airline is cutting back on frequencies to Rome, Vienna, Geneva, Amsterdam, Colombo, Kuala Lumpur and Khartoum while pushing back the launch of services to Accra and Lagos.

RJ has been suffering from recent regional turmoil, high fuel prices due to the country's limited energy reserves and a reduced economic growth in its prime business markets and reported a net loss of JD39.2 million for the first six months of this fiscal year.

 SIA's low cost long haul subsidiary, Scoot, has announced that Gold Coast (IATA:OOL) in Australia will become its second destination. The airline earlier selected Sydney as its first destination.

 Emirates from 1st June 2012, will be adding its third daily flight to Milan. The flight will operate on board Airbus A330-200 aircraft, and will operate from the airline's new third European departures bank. This new bank has seen the addition of flights to Manchester, Frankfurt and Paris recently, after beginning with London Gatwick and Heathrow. The strengthening of this bank will mean the impending expansion of EK's 10-11pm departure bank to Asia, to deliver the feed from these flights. With this addition, the new third daily flight to Rome could be added at any time now, with a likely launch in September or earlier.