Emirates
has officially announced that it will be significantly
increasing capacity to Hong Kong and Bangkok from the on set of the IATA
W13 season as the carrier looks to increase its market share on the Europe-Far
East market segment in particular.
The main highlights are as follows:
HKG – new 4th
daily service introduced using an A332 (dep DXB 2100 and arrives back into DXB
at 1455). As a result, HKG becomes a
daily A380 via BKK + daily A332 nonstop + double daily B77W!
BKK – capacity increased with EK 372/373 (dep DXB 0940) from daily
B77W to daily A380. Thus BKK becomes a double daily A380 + double daily B77W
operated sector.
The Indian
Government has officially announced some clarifications on the newly
liberalized bilateral accord signed
between Abu Dhabi and India as a result of the “Jetihad” alliance. The main highlights are as follows:
DEL/BOM – Etihad is
restricted to operating 3300 seats per week to each city respectively. Taking
this into account, the choices EY have to BOM and DEL are to operate either
triple daily A320 flights or double daily A321 or daily A332 + daily A321.
(Personally speaking from a commercial aspect, a double daily A321 makes the
most sense, but from a market share penetration point of view, a daily A332 +
daily A321 takes the cake especially with now the support of 9W on board for
domestic India and beyond AUH feed + cargo for the A332 bound to EU/USA/Africa)
Rest of India – Etihad can
only operate daily frequencies but can increase capacity to COK, BLR, HYD, AMD,
TRV, CCJ and MAA from daily A320 to daily A321 or A330/B77W if it chooses to.
EY also has the right to launch services to CCU and JAI if it wishes to do so.
Good articles on this deal are mentioned below with passenger data
stats obtained from IATA MarketIS which is a software used by major airlines
and consulting firms worldwide identical to Shepherd System Market Master and PAXIS:
Air
India’s CEO has officially announced that the airline will engage in
an aggressive long haul expansion plan to counter the consequences of how the
newly formed alliance between Etihad and Jet Airways will impact its market
share and revenue on services to Europe and North America in particular. AI’s
CEO revealed that the new destinations
that the airline has short listed for launch in 2013/14 are Milan, Rome,
Moscow, Sydney, Melbourne and Birmingham and all these new services will be
exclusively operated by the Boeing 787-800s only which seat 256 passengers
in a 2 class configuration i.e. 18J + 238Y.
Analysis:
Unfortunately the choice of BHX
seems more political rather than commercially oriented because if AI had done
some basic research, they would have noticed that the Manchester-India market
size is approximately 50% larger than BHX-India plus MAN-India is higher
yielding and in turn has a greater demand for SE Asia (6th freedom
transfer traffic) via AI’s DEL hub which it can use to feed pax on to HKG, BKK,
ICN, SIN, KTM, DAC and Australia.
In 2012, according to Shepherd
system data, the total market size between MAN-India was 190,000 (dominated by
EK and QR) passengers versus BHX-India being 130,000 (dominated by EK overall).
Demand from BHX is mainly concentrated to ATQ/DEL and sees virtually no premium
demand. Currently, Emirates, Uzbekistan Airways and Turkmenistan Airlines
dominate this market segment (ATQ/DEL) and the Central Asian carriers in
particular offer extremely low fares to fill up their flights.
As far as flying to Australia is concerned,
this was in the pipeline since 2010 with two options put forward i.e.
DEL-MEL-SYD-DEL triangular service with a B787 or DEL-MEL nonstop terminator as
the DEL-MEL market size is way bigger than DEL-SYD. However, the current plan
as per Air India is to operate it as a triangular service using a B787. This is
not feasible mainly because by having extra costs incurred via a triangular
service with no 5th freedom traffic rights using a 256 seater aircraft.
Instead, due to the market size demand between MEL/SYD (combined) and DEL
totaling over 200,000 passengers annually, it should be operated using a 342
seater Boeing 777-300ER as it offers 34% more passenger seating capacity + more
cargo uplift carrying capacity hence overall more revenue generation potential
at a higher operational cost which would be negated with the extra pax/cargo
revenue derived.
With regards to FCO and MXP, the
MXP-DEL market size is 3 times bigger versus FCO and higher yielding as well.
AI should not look at FCO unless it has intentions of joining Sky Team which it
doesn’t as even if it did, it would be more lucrative launching
DEL-AMS instead or increasing DEL-CDG capacity versus operating to FCO. The potential
for AI in MXP in terms of sheer volume is most decidedly there, but the issue
for them will be how to revenue manage it !
Qatar Airways has
officially announced that it will be significantly
increasing capacity to COK-Kochi, India effective 01JUN13 in order to
capitalize on the growing traffic demand between Kerala and the GCC in
particular. Currently, QR operates 11
weekly nonstop flights into COK using a 177 seater A321, however from June,
all these flights will be upgraded to a
260 seater A330-200. Thus, overall an increase of 47% in capacity along
with the capability of up-lifting an additional 10 tons of cargo per flight in
each direction.
Spice
Jet of India has officially announced that due to surge of bookings
on its recently launched Delhi-Guangzhou
services, it will be increasing
frequencies on this sector. Currently, it operates 4 times per week from
DEL to CAN using a B737-800 and these shall be increased in turn to 6 times per week using the same
aircraft type effective May 2013. The Delhi-Guangzhou market size according to
Shepherd system in 2012 was 37,000 and two airlines operate nonstop flights on
this route i.e. Spice Jet and China Southern.
British
Airways has officially announced a series of capacity and frequency
changes for its long haul route network for the IATA W13 season of which the
main highlights are as follows:
BOS – frequencies increased
from triple daily to 24 weekly
DEL – capacity increased to
double daily B744
JNB – frequencies increased
from double daily to 17 weekly
BOM – capacity increased to
double daily B744
PEK – capacity reduced from
6 weekly B744s to 6 weekly B772ERs
MIA – frequencies reduced
from triple daily B744s to 18 weekly
Philippine
Airlines has officially announced that it shall be embarking on a major expansion of its GCC network from the on
set of the IATA W13 season using a fleet of brand new Airbus A 330-300s
exclusively. It will be utilizing the planes under the PAL Express branding
which will offer a dual class configuration of premium economy (42 seats) and
normal economy class (300 seats) only +
it will also end all code sharing agreements in place with GCC carriers on the
MNL-GCC sectors it intends on operating.
In other PAL news, the airline has dry leased 4 additional A343s in a
dual class configuration and shall be using them to launch new services to
Istanbul and Moscow this year which were previously announced. PAL’s CEO also
confirmed that the airline has officially filed with the U.S. DOT to launch new
flights to New York City effective November 2013 which shall be operated on a 5
weekly basis using a Boeing 777-300ER. PAL is also taking delivery of 2 new
B77Ws from Boeing in Q3 which will be used for this new route.
The main highlights are as follows:
MCT – new 4 weekly nonstop
flights to be launched effective 30JAN 2014
DMM/RUH/JED – new daily
flights to be launched to each Saudi city effective 01DEC13 using an A333
DXB – new flights to be
launched effective 01NOV13
DOH - new flights to be
launched effective 01NOV13
AUH – new 5 weekly nonstop
flights to be launched effective 01OCT13
Official press release: http://www1.philippineairlines.com/news-and-events/pal-revs-expansion-kicks-12-new-routes/
Comments:
Excellent move by PAL to take
advantage of the growing market segment between MNL and GCC especially now that
the biggest market i.e. KSA has agreed to implement the minimum US$400 per
month salary wage for labor workers from the Philippines. According to Shepherd
System Market Master, the 2012 market sizes on the MNL-GCC sector were as
follows:
DXB – 460,000 // RUH – 250,000 //
DMM-190,000 // JED- 130,000 // KWI- 110,000 // DOH- 105,000 and AUH 80,000
Manila-New York City combined to
JFK and EWR is also a high volume market seeing 91,000 passengers flying last
year. It will be interesting to see if the B77W can indeed fly nonstop with a
full payload or operate via Anchorage.
Ethiopian
Airlines has officially announced that it will be increasing its frequencies to YYZ-Toronto
effective 10JUN13. Currently, ET operates twice a week from ADD via FCO to YYZ
using a B777-200LR, however from mid June, a
3rd weekly frequency shall be added using a Boeing 787-800 on
THU flown in the same manner.
PIA of
Pakistan has revealed on the GDS system that will be no longer going ahead its intentions of re-launching services
to ORD-Chicago, USA as the carrier faces a massive operational headache by
having only 19 aircraft in its fleet for the IATA S13 season deemed air worthy.
All two weekly flights are now showing deleted from across all major GDS
systems and in addition to ORD, flights
to BCN-Barcelona, Spain are also showing cut off from 01AUG. Between
June-August, PIA will be operating 2 weekly terminator flights to BCN from
North Pakistan only.
Comments:
Very smart move to cut off ORD as
it would have been a waste to operate there with the fleet situation is very
critical. PIA should not think of re-launching ORD at all in the short term and
even long term future until it first increases its JFK services from the
current 3 to at least 5 times per week! Demand from JFK alone to PAK is greater
than the rest of USA altogether combined to Pakistan hence PIA needs to focus
on increasing its market share first to/from JFK rather than venturing back to
places such as IAD, IAH and ORD.
