MARCH 2020 PAGE 28 THE FLYING COLUMN


CITYJET announced plans to slash the number of pilots on its payroll in Finland


following the conclusion of redundancy talks in which the airline said it would offload two- thirds of 40 pilots in Helsinki as well as all other flight crew.


TURKISH Airlines is reviewing a third daily flight Dublin-Istanbul most probably


departing before 0600 to connect with Asian flights in the afternoon wave. There may be potential for a fourth daily Dublin flight.


KLM will launch daily Amsterdam-Cork route from Mar20 with 3-class (Business,


Economy Comfort, Economy) KLM Cityhop- per Embraer E175 and E190. Ex AMS 1550, ex Cork 1710 (local). These don’t clash with the Air France timings.


CORK flight school Atlantic Flight Training Academy announced a new partner-


ship with low-cost Turkish airline Pegasus, in which Aer Lingus was a founding partner, to train its pilots. The 20 pilot candidates who will be involved in the pilot training program will receive 18 months of training in Cork be- fore returning to Turkey.


AIR FRANCE-KLM, Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic have been granted


Antitrust Immunity by the US Department of Transportation in the framework of the exten- sion of the transatlantic joint venture, the final regulatory step for the airlines to move forward with their alliance.


BA British Airways is to launch winter 2020/21 services to St Lucia, Cancun and Cape


Town from London Gatwick.


EASYJET is set to return to Britain’s benchmark FTSE 100 index six months after the budget carrier was demoted.


LOGANAIR has announced plans to shut its base at Norwich Airport and cancel its


Norwich-Manchester flights. it will continue to fly out of Norwich to Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Jersey.


RYANAIR applied for two daily Paris Orly to Dublin slots but was not successful.


Aigle Azur slots at Paris Orly were reallocated, largely to Air France for regional PSO and long-haul domestic Outremer services and to other French carriers for long-haul domestic with a routes to Lufthansa (Munich), Wizz Air (Budapest and Sofia), and easyJet (Glasgow).


WIDERNE (Norway) cuts 4,000 annual flights from its domestic network, as the carrier


struggles to reach profitability.


AERCAP entered into an agreement with Boeing to reschedule the delivery pos- itions of a portion of the B737 MAX aircraft under AerCap’s forward order contract with Boeing to later dates.


TAP The Portuguese government aims to keep a 50pc stake in TAP Air Portugal should


there be any change in the future shareholders.


HNA Group (China) has embarked on a divestment campaign with the singular purpose of returning to its core aviation business.


R Michael O;Leary at the Airlines4Europe conference in Brussels End of growth


Ryanair writes off proposed 2pc growth in 2020 He expects a hit in quarter one


yanair CEO Michael O’Leary said that the coronavirus im- pact will not show in the air-


line’s end of year accounts, due at end March.


of 2020-21, dependant on the size of the enforced cancellations due to Coronavirus. Speaking to travel Extra on the


margins of the A4E conference in Brussels he said that the combination of B737 Max and Coronavirus would mean virtually no growth for Ryanair next year, and possible in 2021.


THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MICHAEL


AIRBUS Airbus, if you talk to them, will say our order book is


full out to 2025, we have no cap- acity, and the price codes are mad, so that vindicates their position. Interesting, they called us about a week ago and said, if we had some aircraft available sooner that 2025 would you take them. We said, if the price is right, we’ll take aircraft, today, tomorrow, next month. Yes, we are in the market for aircraft but only if the price is right, and we are happy to wait until the price is right, but we are not going out to buy somebody else’s expensive aircraft.


ALWAYS GETTING


BETTER I would like to think Always Getting Better is still continuing. The problem is it gets overtaken by other issues. It is still there for us. We don’t push it. We are trying to get back to low fare, great care. Nobody is going to pay any attention to what your strapline is amid Covid and Max aircraft delays.


AUSTRIA Austria is a diffi- cult place to make money. It is not


that competitive but there is huge excess capacity. We have charged in there, Wizz has charged in there,


Level were in there, Easyjet were in there before we were. We have seen the same situation emerge. Austrian has gone from 65pc market share in Vienna, this time they will be under 40 for the first time. Lauds has gone from nowhere. This time next year will be up around 30pc to 23pd. Wizz is number three. They should be around 10pc or 12pc. Then there is nobody else. Eurow- ings have pulled out, Level have pulled out, EasyJet have pulled out. If the environmental tax it damages earnings to and from Vienna it will also speed up the consolidation of the withdrawal. I would not be sur- prised to see Wizz withdraw from Vienna or at least close a base in Vienna in the next twelve months


BREXIT There is a reasonable chance that Brexit is going to settle


down by the end of the year. I think a trade deal will get done before the end of the year. I think it will get done because the British to roll over from most of their positions. John- son has the attention of a fleas and he will just deliver. They will finish up with a Norway option. They will pay, they will comply, but they won’t have a seat in the room. You talk to Willie, he thinks it is a box ticking exercise, his insights in Lon-


don are more accurate than mine. I think they are playing politics and it has worked for them. Johnson has got a majority as a result of it. But when push comes to shove they will roll over on it.


GROWTH Even at its best we were only going to deliver 2pc


or 3pc growth, because of Boeing Max. There will probably not be any growth at all, but remember if we get the Max in at the end of the year we will probably add some capacity, but I would think, on bal- ance, probably no growth at all this year.


It is far too early to say what the impact of Coronavirus would be. I think if we were to lose 10pc of our bookings through the second half of March, April and the first half of May, that is probably about 2m passengers, 2m passengers would be most of our growth for the next twelve months, but that would be 2m passengers on a target of 155m, so about one or one and a half per cent.


ITALY Italy is our biggest market, 32m passengers. We are the


biggest airline domestically in Italy. We have 33pc share of the Italian market, Alitalia is about 22pc.


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