Airline Business

RE: Airline Business

Thanks wingflaps. It’s heartening to see that other “young” people are intent on a career in the industry apart from the usual “i wanna fly planes” mantra (though I wouldn’t mind doing that!)

RE: Airline Business

Congratulations Mongu! I wish you well with your accountancy qualification.

If you’re looking for a financial job within an airline, they are always going to need people with your qualifications. In terms of whether there may be many job vacancies in the future when you look is hard to say. The airline industry is going through some bumpy turbulence at present (as you will be aware) and it is hard to predict what shape the industry will be in a couple of years away, i.e. will there be fewer carriers? (less job positions).

In terms of MON, they don’t appear to have vacancies for your work area that often. In fact, I can’t remember seeing a vacancy for treasury or management accounts etc whilst being there.

RE: Airline Business

Wingflaps, I was considering a similar career choice to you. I might still look at it when I qualify. I’ve got a BA in business studies and will soon be a qualified accountant, courtesy of a prestigous firm of accountants.

I’m looking at financial management or treasury management (managing the cashflow) – do you see many of these vacancies popping up within the next few years?

RE: Airline Business

I would think you are better off at Monarch than GB. If you bump into my old friend and former next ddor neighbour Maria Steppin (Head of Cabin Crew now I believe) please say hello from me!

RE: Airline Business

Yes, I’m Luton based and work at the Monarch Airlines head office.

I used to live in North Oxfordshire, but moved down to South Bedfordshire especially for Monarch Airlines. I have had an interest in airlines and airliners since about 1987 when a BA Concorde pilot came into my class at primary school. That inspired me! Plus, we designed an airport during class at primary, and we even received some bits and bobs off Pan Am! My my, such a long time ago. Then I flew British Airtours in 1987. My first time in the skies. I wrote to them afterwards, and they gave me a letter stating that if I ever flew BA or British Airtours again, I should let them know and they will give me and my Brother a cockpit visit. Well, I took them up on that offer when my family and I flew BHX-FAO with BA in April 1992 (the same day EuroDisney opened). The pilots invited my Brother and I to land at FAO in the cockpit, so we ended up spending the last 45 mins of the B737-200 flight in the cockpit listening to FAO ATC.
After the FAO trip, I had the avaition bug well and truly in my veins.
From then on, I started to collect airline memorabilia and had quite a nice hobby going until I wound it down for my A-levels in 1997.

I’ve since graduated twice. Once at Coventry Cathedral and once at Wolverhampton. I gained a 2:1 BA Honours in Bus. Admin. and wrote my dissertation on the future of airline alliances.
I gained an interest in airline strategy whilst doing my studies and it came in handy for my dissertation!
I interviewed Brian Summers, the MD of Birmingham Airport in his office; the Director of Strategy of BA; and I flew down to British European at Exeter for the day (when BE where still doing BHX-EXT!!) and interviewed the Director of Strategy and also meet the now ex CEO, Barry Perrott. The man at BE is the one who decides the aircraft types and network.
So, I had an interesting time researching my dissertation.

After graduating, I wrote to many a UK airline trying to secure a job. The closest I got to getting a job interview was with GB Airways, but they didn’t have any vacancies in the end. It was post September 11th, so there wasn’t much about. A bit of a bummer.
In the end, I kept the MON job vacancies page book marked from their website. At the time, MON were one of the only airlines to advertise on their websites. I wrote in for a job in Economic Planning and got it! I was over qualified academically, but you need to try and get your foot in the door some how.
Any how, I am now in the early stages of promotion to Economic Analyst. Don’t go into airlines if you want a decent salary though!

The Economic Planning Manager and I prepare the airline’s budgets, catering costs, monitor the Scheduled flights’ bookings, cost each route the airline flies for the charterers, cost the ad-hoc flights, maintain the world airport charges information, cost positioning flights and so, so much more. We cost the flying programme basically.
We are going to be getting involved more with the fuel prices.

I work in the same office as a man who used to run Dan Air. He has many an interesting tale to tell. They were the days of real aviation! I also work alongside a man who helped set up Orion Airways.

Rgrds.
Wingflaps.

RE: Airline Business

Cheers for the Wingflaps – v interesting reading – where are you based Luton for Monarch? and what is your actual job title?

RE: Airline Business

You’re thinking of G-MONC which cost about $3m to fix! That was a mixture of factors and the report of that incident is on the CAA website?

It was my educational flight. A freebie. I was off work for the day, got paid and given inflight meals and drinks! Spiffing!
GIB is a difficult airport to operate into which is why I chose it for my ride. I’m glad I did! I was thinking “I hope this is going to stop soon, because there’s water over there!”

I recommend GIB to everybody. It’s safe!

I’ve still got to open my £5.50 1 litre bottle of Gordons Gin I bought in GIB duty free.

RE: Airline Business

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 25-01-03 AT 11:58 PM (GMT)]I trust that wasn’t the famoust Monarch 757 flight into GIB last year!!! I’ve never been there and from the sounds of it I think I’d quite like to leave it that way. Funchal, Samos and Corfu do enough for my nerves already!
We’re very lucky in the 75 that we have a very spacious cockpit compared to aircraft like the 73. It certainly makes opening a broadsheet newspaper easier (not that we ever do that of course!).
We used to get RavenAir in to do any slot maintenance for us in their little Aztecs but it seems the authorities want it done properly these days.

RE: Airline Business

Very true. Slots are priceless.

I flew in the jump seat of G-MOND on 4th August last year from LTN to GIB and back. B757’s making an interesting ride from the cockpit! I was amazed at the size of the fuse panel above the pilot seats!
We had to wait for a dog to clear the runway before take-off from GIB. I was only there for an hour, but I’ve touched the GIB soil!

RE: Airline Business

To give you an idea how prized slots are a couple of years ago I flew an empty 757 from LGW to LTN, went to MacDonalds for breakfast and then flew the same empty 757 back to LGW purely to have made an arrival and departure at LTN to keep the slot! I rate it as the most expensive MacDonalds I’ve ever had!

RE: Airline Business

I’m afraid I don’t have MSN messenger or the other one you mentioned.

If you drop me an email (my home email) then I’ll see how I can help you out.

I forgot to mention that within the cost of the in-flight meal are other elements. These being an airport levy, dry stores cost and wash-up charge.
The airport i.e. LGW/BHX/MAN et al charge the catering company/airline a levy on the catering uplifts. This levy is say 10% of the basic meal cost. The levy is another source of income for an airport, besides the other ways they generate revenue (landing charge, parking charge, passenger service charge and their cut from airport retail outlets’ profits etc).
Dry stores are the items such as the cutlery pack, food dishes etc, which have to be costed in. The wash-up charge is paid when the food dishes arrive back in the UK and are cleaned ready for re-use.

Airport slots are not controlled by an airport, but rather through a company called ACL (Airport Co-ordination Ltd). When an airline requires a slot, you contact ACL and not the airport in question.
Slots are historical. If you don’t make use of your slots, you loose them and they get re-distributed next time around to other airlines.

Certain airports also charge airlines for noise and emissions. The more noisier the aircraft i.e. B737-200, BAC1-11, B727 etc, the more expensive it is to fly to an airport which charges. Emissions charges become the more expensive if you have unclean engines on your aircraft which will give out more N Ox emissions on landing and take-off cycles.
UK airports don’t tend to charge these items at the moment, but a lot of European airports do.

By the way, the new Monarch Airlines livery model aircraft arrived at head office a couple of weeks ago. If anyone is interested in purchasing any, they may sell them by post. (A320,A321,B757,AB6,A330).
Try writing into the In-flight Product department at Monarch Head Office if you’re interested.

RE: Airline Business

Great info Wingflaps,

do you have MSN or ICQ? As it looks like you can really help us out in some matters.

RE: Airline Business

Great info from Wingflaps. I should think that Interflug would be particularly knowledgeable on this matter as well.

RE: Airline Business

Slot allocation is usually based on the historical rights of an airline at an airport (i.e. if you’re a frequent operator from LGW, you will be allocated xx number of slots a year in ratio to your historical number of flights operated. You also get a certain number of slots for operating ad-hoc flights allocated as a percentage of your historical slot rights at an airport. I believe that is what slot allocation is based on, don’t hold me to that.

Catering costs are calculated according to volume. If you are an airline who uplifts large amounts of catering from LGW for example, then you are likely to get a volume related discount from the LGW catering company. All catering costs will be commercially sensitive to an airline and you will not be able to obtain these. Although I have got many different prices for UK and European airport catering in my memory, I’m not in a position to disclose the information. Most UK charter airlines will uplift both the outbound and inbound flight’s catering from the UK departure airport due to the quality of food from the foreign airports. Spain, Portugal, Greece and some longhaul airports are used for uplifting. Italy is very expensive.

Aircraft lease costs and maintenance costs will again be commercially sensitive to each individual airline. Lease costs are usually costed on a per month basis.

I could help you out with the published airport and navigation charges if you need information for landing, parking, terminal navigation etc. This is information that all airlines receive and would therefore not be commercially sensitive.
En route navigation costs will be more difficult for you to cost, as there are weight factors to calculate into the costing plus you would need to know the distance in kilometers you will be over-flying each country to calculate the charge for that country.

I think BOH and NCL have their airport charges listed on their webites. NWI is VERY expensive for landing at night time.

I hope this information helps. Good luck!

Wingflaps.

RE: Airline Business

Well I should get a BAe 146 then 😛

but anyways, thank you all for the info, if you have any you can allways send it to me.

btw we have a very basic website: http://www.hkjoeyyung.org/~airbizz/

RE: Airline Business

I have a sim called “Airline” which has a lot of this info, though I don’t know where the developers found it all!

www.airlinesimulation.com

RE: Airline Business

I think at the moment 146 leasing companies will almost pay you to take them off their hands 😉

RE: Airline Business

Sounds a very interesting venture. Good luck with it and I look forward to trying it out in the not too distant future!

RE: Airline Business

had to wys….if lessors wanted to survive!

RE: Airline Business

3 years ago you could dry lease a Saab 340A for £40,000 per month, while a Shorts 360-200 was £28,000 per month. I would imagine those prices have gone down dramatically since.