Etihad Airways has officially announced that it will be majorly increasing its presence in South India with the expansion of flights into Calicut, Hyderabad and Kochi in the below mentioned manner:
COK - frequencies increased from double to triple daily using an A321 double daily + A320 daily effective 15MAY
HYD - frequencies increased from double to triple daily using an A321 double daily + A320 daily effective 15JUN
CCJ - frequencies increased from double to triple daily using an A321 daily + A320 double daily effective 01MAY
Etihad Airways has officially announced that due to a slow down of the Russian economy and its people travelling abroad both for business + leisure, it shall be halving its operations into DME-Moscow airport effective 15JUN onwards. Current double daily services using an A321 shall be reduced to a daily frequency only, arriving into DME at 0710 and departing back by 1255. EY's A321s seat 174 pax in a two class configuration i.e. 16J + 158Y!
In addition to the above, the airline confirmed increasing its frequencies to MCT-Muscat by adding a new 4th daily service using an A320 effective 15JUN.
United Airlines has officially announced that it has placed an order with Boeing for 10 new Boeing 777-300ERs to be delivered from 2016 onwards in exchange for options it currently holds on its Boeing 787-900 order book. It ordered the B77W in order to be a capacity bridge aircraft for its aging fleet of 24 B747-400s which are slated to be retired by 2017-18. The original aircraft ordered by UA to replace the B744 was the Airbus A 350-1000 but that wont be available for many years. In addition, UA also revealed the below mentioned changes to its fleet strategy:
- 10 B777-200s currently being used on trans-atlantic services will be re-deployed exclusively on domestic/Hawaii flights along with it being reconfigured to suit the USA market segment
- All B757 flying on trans-atlantic routes into mainland Europe (excluding Ireland/UK) shall be discontinued
- 21 Boeing 767-300ERs will get winglets installed and as a result shall get their lifespan in the UA fleet extended for a few more years
Turkish Airlines has revealed that as part of its seasonal capacity adjustments across its long haul network, it will be reducing its flights to NRT-Tokyo Narita airport from the on set of the IATA W15 season i.e. 25OCT.
Currently, the airline operates a double daily nonstop flight using a B773ER + A333 on a daily basis each respectively. Effective 25OCT, TK will be reducing NRT-IST to 11 weekly nonstop using an A333 exclusively !
Air France has officially announced that due to high demand for its San Francisco bound flights, it will be increasing its presence in that marketplace accordingly. Effective 15JUN, its current 12 weekly flights will be increased to double daily nonstop operated with an A380 + B772ER.
Lufthansa has officially announced that due to high seasonal demand to Cape Town from Europe in the winter season, it will be increasing its flights accordingly. Currently, LH operates a 5 weekly nonstop service from Munich to Cape Town using an A340-600. These will be boosted to daily nonstop flights effective 25OCT.
Malaysia Airlines has officially announced that as part of its on going cost saving measures, it will be suspending its heavily loss making flights to Frankfurt effective 29MAY15. Currently, MAS operates 5 times per week nonstop using a B777-200ER.
The top ten markets that MH has out of FRA are KUL, DPS, HKT, USM, SYD, AKL, MNL, MEL, CGK and PER.
Comments:
This is not unexpected one bit and one can place a bet that the next long haul route to be targeted by MH will be IST !
Who stands to gain most with this suspension announcement are both EK and QR especially as they are adding capacity to DPS, CGK and HKT in particular from June onwards so with MH pulling out of FRA, this in turn will definitely further boost their own S/F on these routes. FYI in 2014, MH carried 11,000 pax to DPS + HKT combined.
A new Oman-Philippines bilateral accord has been signed of which the main highlights are as follows:
- Bilateral
frequencies allocation increased from 4 to 7 for each side with WY
being allowed daily services exclusively from Oman's side
- From Philippines side, Cebu Pacific got 4 slots and PAL 3 into MCT
- Oman Air secured fifth freedom rights on BKK-MNL, KUL-MNL and JKT-MNL
- Philippine based carriers secured 5th freedom rights in turn on India (any one city only)-MCT + Europe-MCT (any one city only)
WY
is expected to boost MNL flights to daily in W15 season (NOV onwards) upon delivery
of additional A333s this year. Currently, their flights have 62% point to point
traffic and 38% transit beyond MCT of which Paris (CDG) has been cited as the
top feeder market for them in Europe on this route.
