RAIL
East Coast trains boosted by £2.7bn rolling stock deal
RAIL SERVICES BETWEEN LONDON AND SCOTLAND are set to be improved by a £2.7 billion deal to build new rolling stock. Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin announced private funding had been secured to build new “state of the art” trains, including 500 carriages which
will operate on the East Coast Main Line. He said the new trains would add 19 per cent more seats on services from London to Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh. The new Class 800 trains will be built by Hitachi Rail Europe in County Durham and are scheduled to begin service from 2018.
IN BRIEF
■ Silver Rail has raised US$40 million in its latest round of funding. The Shoreditch- based rail booking technology firm says the new funding will be used to integrate more rail companies into the platform, with plans to introduce Asian rail operators. Silver Rail will also expand its reservation systems, as well as its seating management, reporting and analytics.
ECONOMICS
‘Sluggish’ growth for business travel in western world
THE WESTERN WORLD’S business travel market has not yet recovered from the financial crisis and will not reach pre-recession levels until at least 2018, according to a report published by travel tech firm Amadeus. Among the
findings in Amadeus’ Shaping the Future of Travel report is that, despite an upturn in the global economy across Europe, travel spend in the region is still
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
behind the levels seen in 2008. The report
showed the slow growth of North America and Europe is being countered by strong growth in the east and other emerging economies, with the study predicting Asia will account for 55 per cent of all global business travel growth in the next ten years.
The study showed the global travel industry as a whole
is set for a decade of sustained growth, with China poised to become the world’s largest outbound travel market this year. “The travel
industry has had a difficult time in the past five years, but when you look at the report the tide is turning and we see a very strong potential for growth in different sectors,” said the report’s author and associate director at Oxford Economics, Andrew Tessler.
■ Emirates has launched its first A380 service to Gatwick. The airline flies the A380 daily with flight EK9 departing Dubai at 1500 and arriving at Gatwick at 1930, and EK10 leaving Gatwick at 2115 and landing in Dubai at 0720 the next day. In order to become A380-compliant, Gatwick invested £6.4 million in new facilities, including the widening of three runway rapid-exit taxiways.
AIRLINES
BA CHOOSES ESSEX SITE FOR BIOFUEL PLANT
BRITISH AIRWAYS HAS SELECTED a site in Essex to build its ground-breaking Green Sky London environmental project to create biofuel for its aircraft
The airline and its partner, Solena Fuels, intends to use the site at Thames Enterprise Park in Thurrock to construct the world’s first facility for turning household waste into jet fuel. The Green Sky project featured in Buying Business Travel’s Hotlist 2014 (BBT, Jan/Feb). BA said it had chosen the Essex site due to its “excellent transport links and existing fuel storage facilities”. The plant is set to be completed in 2017 and will create up to 150 permanent jobs. Willie Walsh, chief executive of BA’s parent company IAG, said: “We are always striving to reduce our impact on climate change and this first-of-its-kind project marks a significant step for the aviation industry. The construction of the Green Sky London fuel facility at Thames Enterprise Park will lay the foundations for British Airways to reduce its carbon emissions significantly. BA has promised to buy all jet fuel
produced by the plant for the next 11 years, which is estimated to be worth US$550 million at today’s prices.
TECHNOLOGY
FLIGHT INFO ON MOBILE BECOMING THE NORM
MORE THAN HALF OF AIR PASSENGERS will use their mobiles to check flight and baggage status by 2016, with all the major airlines offering these services, research from IT firm SITA has predicted. SITA also found 90 per cent of the airports it approached were investing in ‘intelligent information’ to offer similar services. The report, Smart Thinking, was released at the Airlines in Transition Summit in Dublin in April. SITA found that flight status updates
were already a mainstream mobile service and that “the vast majority” of airlines and airports would offer this by the end of 2016.
BBT MAY/JUNE 2014 7
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