Posted December 22, 2008 12:41 PM
By James Mellon
Flying in the Face of Adversity
Although the industry is suffering at the moment, some airlines are successfully battling the downward economic trend. There are still new opportunities out there that airlines are hoping to exploit and earn revenue from.
One of them is Turkish Airlines, who have just added services from Istanbul to Birmingham and are about to start charter cargo services to Baghdad. The airline plans to commence passenger services to various new destinations in 2009. Nairobi, Lviv, Gothenburg and Mashad are due to start during the first and second quarters.
An airline that’s always on the offensive, AirAsia continues to add regional destinations in south-east Asia. Air Asia is known to be aggressive in its marketing and creating around 30%-40% of new markets to cities it serves. The Indian city of Tiruchirapalli will be added soon, and the airline is looking to start Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Having acquired a second Airbus A330-300 aircraft, their long haul subsidiary AirAsiaX began Melbourne following on from existing services to Gold Cost airport and Perth. Once their second hand A340-300 arrives Kuala Lumpur to London-Stansted will begin in March.
Air Arabia will be setting up a base in Morocco, to enable flights into Africa and Europe. They have started serving Kiev in the Ukraine, and have been looking at establishing a codeshare agreement with easyJet.
Lufthansa added services from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi at the start of the winter season, plus a second daily flight to Dubai. Spanish national carrier Iberia continues to provide more of their specialty long haul services to South America. Montevideo in Uruguay will commence in January, with more expansion set to follow.
It’s not just airlines from the Middle East, Europe and Asia that are expanding. Delta have just begun new services to South America, and has ambitious plans to add services to several African and European destinations, 15 in total. Atlanta will see the majority of the services linking up with African cities, Abuja, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Luanda, Malabo, Monrovia and Nairobi. In New York Delta will also start operations to Lagos, plus Gothenburg, Prague, Valencia and Zurich. Lastly, the three largest Delta hubs at Atlanta, New York-JFK and Salt Lake City will be linked to Tokyo Narita too, where Northwest have a sizable presence. Delta clearly sees international expansion as more lucrative than domestic services.
Some airlines will have committed to these services before the change in the economic climate, and will still operate them despite the doom and gloom! But for some others there is hope in finding profitable routes to operate on.
Leave a comment