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WITH ALL THE DOOM and gloom that sometimes emanates from the airline industry, it is easy to forget how dynamic it is – hardly a month goes by without news of a route launch, with airlines in Europe, the Middle East and Asia/Pacific leading the way. The next 12 months will see a continuation of a process that gathers pace as British Airways absorbs Bmi, consolidation continues worldwide and the Middle East carriers continue their march unabated, realigning the global airline map to give buyers an increasing range of options. One of the pairings that will affect the UK market well into 2013 is British Airways’ purchase of Bmi. BA’s windfall of 42 pairs of slots at Heathrow and a fleet of around 25 aircraft is taking a long while to absorb, and the airline will not confirm the major changes to its network until the summer 2013 timetable, beginning at the end of March.
These details, likely to be released in October, will be a watershed for BA, as it now has the slots to offer more services to China and Asia, an ambition it has made no secret of. BA has already freed up some space for these from the former Bmi network, axing Amritsar, Bishkek, Casablanca, Dammam, Khartoum, and Yerevan from the autumn schedules. However, it has also added the former Bmi routes of Almaty, Amman, Baku, Beirut, Freetown and Tbilisi to the BA network. BA has come full circle, as only five years ago, it allowed Bmi to buy Bmed, then the franchise that operated as BA on these routes. Meanwhile, as it continues the integration process, BA has been able to announce only one new long- haul route this year, to Seoul, a city it last served in 1998 and one whose importance as a business destination has since soared, with the likes of Samsung and Hyundai becoming household-brandnames in the UK.
Another key BA expansion comes
this autumn, when Las Vegas, a route BA began flying in 2009 from Heathrow, is supplemented by three flights from Gatwick, which will move some of the leisure traffic off the Heathrow flights. Las Vegas’s vast hotel stock has meant it has emerged as an increasingly important convention destination in the past few years, with a colossal 4.8 million delegates attending 19,000 events in 2011. One downside to the Bmi
integration for buyers planning itineraries involving transfers is that BA, having moved the bulk of operations at Heathrow to T5, is back to where it started in being spread throughout the airport once more. It now operates from T1 again, as well as T3 and 5. To add to the confusion, a number of existing
This will be a watershed for BA, as it now has the slots to offer more services to China and Asia, an ambition it has made no secret of
British Airways routes including Basel, Dusseldorf, Luxembourg, Lyon and Toulouse will move from T5 to T1 this winter.
As BA divvies up its new slots,
other carriers have had a head start. Heathrow’s owner-operator BAA estimates there are now 21 emerging destinations serviced from airports in Europe that are absent among Heathrow’s route portfolio.
CHINA
This is immediately evident when looking at China. Lufthansa began a route this summer from Frankfurt to the eastern industrial city of Quingdao, better known in the west as Tsingtao, home of the eponymous beer brand. The service is via Shenyang, a vehicle and machine tool manufacturing centre. Air France introduced a route
to Wuhan, a technology and vehicle manufacturing centre, in April, while in May, Finnair started flying from Helsinki to Chongqing, a city where there is probably room for BA to operate as well, as its regional population is an estimated 32 million. One other new route equally underlines Heathrow’s scarce capacity and China’s importance. China Southern’s service to the commercial centre of Guangzhou, China’s third biggest city, began in June and is Heathrow’s only new route launch so far this year. BAA claims that it took the Skyteam member eight years to find suitable slots for it and that the airline had to seek these from other carriers, a problem BA no longer has. Consequently, BA may be considering some of the other Chinese industrial centres already served from European hubs, namely Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xiamen and Nanjing.
Gaining slots via ‘back door’ methods means China Southern has not had to follow Hong Kong Airlines and Vietnam Airlines in launching their inaugural UK services from Gatwick. Air China and Korean Air, which were also unable to secure extra Heathrow slots for their UK expansion, have also resorted to adding services from Gatwick. The Sussex airport has said there will be no more new carriers in the short term, but some announcements this autumn are likely given the attractive incentives the airport is offering airlines, such as the waiving of landing fees during winter.
MIDDLE EAST
The next 12 months will see the Middle East continue to grow in importance as an aviation hub. A lot of the focus this year will be on Qatar. Here, the new airport is officially opened in December, but delays to fitting out means it will not be fully operational until well into 2013. However, the airline is among the first to operate the Boeing 787 to
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