Monday, December 08, 2008
Airlines Go Merger Crazy!
Don't look now, but soon there may be just one or two airlines to choose from. Or at least so it seems. The tough economy has left a lot of airlines easy pickings for the stronger in a relatively weak field to consolidate and grow.
Delta and Northwest combined just a couple months ago, Lufthansa recently completed its acquisition of Austrian Airlines, joining Swiss to its stable of fellow airlines. And now, its sight is set on Alitalia... as the italian bankruptcy mess sorts itself out. Alitalia, before any other airline gets its hands on it, is looking to merge with its rival Italian carrier "AirOne." Air France/KLM has its sight set on Alitalia too, so Lufthansa is taking no chances, setting up "Lufthansa Italia," a six plane airline based in Milan.
In the meantime, British Airways is building its own empire, looking to merge with both Spain's Iberia Airways and Australia's Qantas. Not to mention each of these European players has a stake in US Airlines.
AirFrance/KLM are extremely invested in Delta/Northwest. Lufthansa owns 19% of JetBlue, and has a close alliance with United - which is also cozying up to Continental. British Airways and American are extremely close as well.
So what does this mess mean for you? Maybe not a lot in the short term, but down the road look at less competition and higher fares.
Delta and Northwest combined just a couple months ago, Lufthansa recently completed its acquisition of Austrian Airlines, joining Swiss to its stable of fellow airlines. And now, its sight is set on Alitalia... as the italian bankruptcy mess sorts itself out. Alitalia, before any other airline gets its hands on it, is looking to merge with its rival Italian carrier "AirOne." Air France/KLM has its sight set on Alitalia too, so Lufthansa is taking no chances, setting up "Lufthansa Italia," a six plane airline based in Milan.
In the meantime, British Airways is building its own empire, looking to merge with both Spain's Iberia Airways and Australia's Qantas. Not to mention each of these European players has a stake in US Airlines.
AirFrance/KLM are extremely invested in Delta/Northwest. Lufthansa owns 19% of JetBlue, and has a close alliance with United - which is also cozying up to Continental. British Airways and American are extremely close as well.
So what does this mess mean for you? Maybe not a lot in the short term, but down the road look at less competition and higher fares.
Labels: airlines, alitalia, british airways, lufthansa, travel
Saturday, January 19, 2008
This Week In Links: Best of the Web
First, a few words about this blog. Friday, we had our 200th post ever. Which is kinda sad because this blog is over 5 years old, but its a nice milestone none the less, so congratulations to us. Since the first relaunch of this blog in May of last year, we've also welcomed over 1,000 page views - the magic number hit in the early part of January. So I hope that you are enjoying what you are reading, and please feel free to continue to do so.
In other news, crazy stuff happening with planes this past week. There was that British Airways 777 that lost power coming into Heathrow and kinda crash landed short of the runway, and then an Air Canada A319 that suffered some pretty severe turbulence. Turbulence Forecast blog has some interesting ideas about exactly what happened to the flight.
Also, less jarring avaiation news was to be had this week as well. Norwegian Air Shuttle will be offering cell phone service on their flights according to Jaunted. So, if I were you, I'd get ready for a whole host of "Guess where I'm calling from!!!" phone calls in the latter half of 2008.
One of my favorite travel writers in blogworld wonders about travel writing in newspapers, check out the thoughts from Knife Tricks.
Finally, I read this great blog post by Clearly Enlight, about travel and the battle between quality and quantity.
In other news, crazy stuff happening with planes this past week. There was that British Airways 777 that lost power coming into Heathrow and kinda crash landed short of the runway, and then an Air Canada A319 that suffered some pretty severe turbulence. Turbulence Forecast blog has some interesting ideas about exactly what happened to the flight.
Also, less jarring avaiation news was to be had this week as well. Norwegian Air Shuttle will be offering cell phone service on their flights according to Jaunted. So, if I were you, I'd get ready for a whole host of "Guess where I'm calling from!!!" phone calls in the latter half of 2008.
One of my favorite travel writers in blogworld wonders about travel writing in newspapers, check out the thoughts from Knife Tricks.
Finally, I read this great blog post by Clearly Enlight, about travel and the battle between quality and quantity.
Labels: air canada, british airways, in-flight entertainment, journalism, links, travel
Friday, January 11, 2008
The Sky Is Opening Up!
British Airways made the official announcement this week. They're starting a brand new airline! Starting this summer, the British carrier will be taking advantage of the new US/EU Open Skies agreement to start an airline whose main base of operations will be New York to fly business class passengers to mainland Europe.
These 757 aircraft will fly from New York to Brussels or Paris, with a three class 80 seat configuration. The decision is probably to do a few things. First, like Delta did with their experimental secondary airline, Song, to test out new innovations, services and potentially revenue making service for British Airways transcontinental product. Second, it is to help British Airways take advantage of testing the Open Skies waters to see how profitable it will be to make direct flights between the US and mainland Europe happen. And third, it's there to try to decimate the all-business airlines that are starting to cannibalize market share from British Airways. If the first destination is Paris, that means that they're after L'Avion. The NYC-Paris all business class airline.
That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't BA go after Silverjet and Eos - since the airlines are direct competition with their NYC to London route? Probably because the risk of stealing their own market share is pretty great. So why go after business that isn't really hurting you?
This is a move, that I don't really understand that much. I can't see the profit in it, it just looks like hubris from an airline that thinks it can be dominant in transatlantic markets, when in reality, it probably can't be.
OpenSkies has a website that's really more of a blog than anything else. It is expected to start flying this summer. And my expectation? It will stop flying sometime next summer, to be replaced with regular British Airways service.
These 757 aircraft will fly from New York to Brussels or Paris, with a three class 80 seat configuration. The decision is probably to do a few things. First, like Delta did with their experimental secondary airline, Song, to test out new innovations, services and potentially revenue making service for British Airways transcontinental product. Second, it is to help British Airways take advantage of testing the Open Skies waters to see how profitable it will be to make direct flights between the US and mainland Europe happen. And third, it's there to try to decimate the all-business airlines that are starting to cannibalize market share from British Airways. If the first destination is Paris, that means that they're after L'Avion. The NYC-Paris all business class airline.
That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't BA go after Silverjet and Eos - since the airlines are direct competition with their NYC to London route? Probably because the risk of stealing their own market share is pretty great. So why go after business that isn't really hurting you?
This is a move, that I don't really understand that much. I can't see the profit in it, it just looks like hubris from an airline that thinks it can be dominant in transatlantic markets, when in reality, it probably can't be.
OpenSkies has a website that's really more of a blog than anything else. It is expected to start flying this summer. And my expectation? It will stop flying sometime next summer, to be replaced with regular British Airways service.
Labels: british airways, openskies, travel
