Air Asia X, the long haul arm of the famous low cost carrier has officially announced its return to Europe with the launch of new flights to Barcelona and Istanbul each respectively.
It will operate the route on a daily basis using an A330-300 as KUL-IST-BCN v.v. effective 30OCT16 using the below mentioned schedule:
D7 001 Dep KUL1000 Arr IST 1500 // Dep IST1630 Arr BCN– 1920
D7 002 Dep BCN 2050 Arr IST 0120+1 // Dep IST 0250 Arr KUL 1930
Comments:
It is highly surprising to see a carrier launch a new daily service to IST this fall season considering the on going political unrest in Turkey. In addition, D7 is flying from the on set a daily service to 2 new long haul destinations by giving the market only 2 months advance awareness notice which is not enough.
IST is a big market from KUL seeing 96,000 passengers in 2015 but that was when things were stable law and order wise in Turkey. As far as BCN is concerned, the demand from KUL in 2015 was 17,000 pax however the main aim for both these destinations is to feed on to other Air Asia flights via KUL to Austral-Asia. Demand from IST to SE Asia is very big however from BCN it isnt and considering its a two stop product on offer versus one stop on EK/QR/TK/LH/AF/KL/LX, BCN will be a tough nut to crack as these legacy carriers wont cede market share to D7 that easily !
Emirates has officially announced that it will be significantly increasing its capacity on both its Manchester and Guangzhou routes effective 01OCT16 onwards in the following manner:
CAN - capacity increased from daily B77W to daily A380 effective 01OCT16
MAN - capacity increased to an exclusive triple daily A380 service effective 01JAN17
Comments:
The capacity increase to CAN would enable EK to compete more effectively versus the low price tag of ET/KQ on the West/East Africa-CAN segment where demand is high but ultra price sensitive.
Air France has officially announced that it will be launching new nonstop services into Accra, Ghana effective 28FEB17 onwards. Currently, this market is served by its sister carrier KLM nonstop from Amsterdam but having noticed the higher yields + more stable operating environment that Accra offers versus all other British West African states, AF has decided to expand its reach.
It shall operate 3 weekly flights using a B777-200ER using the below mentioned schedule:
Days - 2/4/6
AF 780 Dep CDG 1530 Arr ACC 1950
AF 731 Dep ACC 2340 Arr CDG 0800+1
