BUSINESS NEWS
Delta posts strong quarter but dip in transatlantic sales
Delta Air Lines reported a $1.7 billion operating profit for the three months to September and net profit of $3.79 billion for the year to date, up from $2.6 billion a year ago. Chief executive Ed Bastian
hailed the results as “at the top end of our expectation”, forecasting Delta would “deliver strong December quarter earnings”. Airline president Glen
Hauenstein added: “Sales trends accelerated across all geographies over the last six weeks.” Delta’s quarterly operating revenue rose 4% year on year
Delta says ‘sales trends accelerated’ in late August and September
New carrier Riyadh Air to start selling tickets from the new year
to $16.7 billion, with premium revenue up 9% and corporate sales up 8%. However, the airline’s transatlantic revenue fell 2% year on year in the quarter alongside a 5% rise in capacity, suggesting weakening demand. Domestic passenger revenue was
up 5% year on year, and domestic revenue up 2% in the quarter, while passenger revenue for the year to date rose 2% to $38.9 billion.
New Saudi carrier Riyadh Air will launch scheduled flights from Heathrow on October 26 but won’t start selling tickets until the new year. Flights between the
Saudi capital Riyadh and Heathrow will operate daily as the airline, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign Public Investment Fund, launches a multibillion-dollar drive to compete with the Gulf carriers. However, tickets will only be
available to airline staff and their families initially, with a second
service to Dubai due to launch about a month later dependent on an aircraft delivery. Riyadh Air’s launch has been heavily delayed by the late delivery of Boeing aircraft, but chief executive Tony Douglas expects a delivery each month now and is due to start taking deliveries from Airbus next year.
The carrier has 182 aircraft on
order and plans to operate to 100 destinations in five years. Douglas was previously chief
executive of Etihad Airways, running the airline from 2018 to 2022.
Booking halves Atol in two years Ian Taylor
Booking.com cut its Atol capacity in the September licence renewals despite reporting growth in bookings of ‘connected trips’ – packages – in its most recent financial results. The online accommodation
giant reduced its Atol by 157,000 to just over 1,114,000, less than half the 2,387,509 protected customers Booking was licensed to carry two years ago. However, Booking reported
hitting “a milestone” in ‘Connected Trip transactions’, or dynamically packaged trips, in its most recent financial results for the three months to June. Chief executive Glenn Fogel reported these “grew over 30% year over year and now represent a low double-digit percentage of Booking. com’s total transactions”.
travelweekly.co.uk We’re pushing our
Connected Trip vision. Travellers who book a Connected Trip with us more frequently book directly again
He insisted: “We’re pushing
forward our Connected Trip vision. Travellers who book a Connected Trip with us more frequently choose to book directly again with us.” Booking has talked about
developing ‘Connected Trips’ since acquiring tour operator software firm FareHarbor in 2018 and confirmed its focus on these in 2021, when Fogel argued: “When planning a trip you need a flight, a hotel and ground transport, and when something goes wrong you want one place to call.”
In 2023, Booking told Travel
Weekly: “The priority has been to scale up a robust flight platform which will allow us to cross-sell other services.” But the European Commission blocked Booking’s proposed €1.63 billion takeover of flight platform eTraveli that year. Travel Weekly revealed in October
2023 that
Booking.com does not sell packages under its own Atol but under the Atols of partner online agencies such as
lastminute.com, using its own Atol only to cover flight-only sales. A Booking spokesperson
explained the company’s Atol figures “are for flight-only bookings” with protection of packages “arranged via the partner”. The CAA only requires Atol cover
for seat-only bookings in certain circumstances such as if a customer pays a deposit for a flight but receives
Glenn Fogel
the ticket on paying the balance.
Lastminute.com, which trades
under the Atol of parent Bravonext, also reduced its licence at the September renewal – cutting it from 754,456 to 732,024. The reductions appear at odds
with Booking’s strategy in a period when sales of Atol-protected packages have boomed. Atol capacity hit a new record of 34.8 million following the September renewals.
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Shutterstock/VanderWolf Images, MC Mediastudio
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