New airline in NL, Vipair wants to starts next summer.

Translated from a Dutch article at http://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl.

http://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/news/?id=6389 (Dutch only)
New Dutch airline Vipair sets ambitious targets.

DRIEBERGEN – Jacob Kranenburg is trying to start a new airline in the netherlands. Vipair is supposed to start next summer season. Kranenburg has extensive plans to fly to numerous destinations from both Amsterdam (AMS) and Duesseldorf (DUS). The route network includes destinations in Italy, Israel and Egypt. However, the most important destinations are in the central-asian countries of Kazachstan and Kyrgystan.

The proposed routes are impressive. From the end of march/ealy april Vipair wants to fly on 5 different routes. Three routes go from Amsterdam via Dusseldorf to Kazachstan and Kyrgystan. In Kazachstan the cities of Aktau, Almaty and Astana are to be served. In Kyrgystan the capital city of Bishkek is the destination. In one of those three destinations an additional stop between Astana (Kazachstan) and Berlin Schoenefeldt is planned.

The company is aiming for Kazachstani (sp?) in the Netherlands and Germany. “In particular Germany has many Kazahstanis”, says Kranenburg. His wife also comes from there. Kranenburg continued to say that “the oil industry there should not be underestimated either. That too may yield much traffic”.

According to Kranenburg, Vipair has already made agreements with several tour operators for fligths to ROme Fiumicino, Sharm el Sheik, Cairo and Tel Aviv. Airport handling and catering has also been arranged. Starting november 25th Vipair has opened an office in Hoofddorp (just west of schiphol). The airline also has a desk at Schiphols departure desk.

SABENA Technics has signed for the maintenance of the planes. “We will start with two airbusses”, says Kranenburg. “One ex Olympic A300 and one ex Singapore Airlines A310. For both planes we are using a leasing construction. When the routes are succesful we want to introduce a 3rd airbus at the end of the first operational year.

Full service.
The planes will have a tourist- and businessclass. Kranenburg stresses that Vipair is not a low cost airline. “We will offer full service flights. The sales will take place via the website that will go onlin in december. Of course the tour operators we are working with will also sell seats.”

Kranenburg holds all the shares, but says he has sufficient bank guarantees to launch Vipair succesfully. “We are all reay. I can count on an enthiousiastic team with lots of experienced people from the travel industry.”

For now Vipair does not have slots at Schiphol though. Neither do they have an AOC (Air Operator Certificate). According to Kranenburg this is merely a matter of time. “There are suffcient slots available in the summer schedule to add 20 to 24 flights per week. And the AOC has already been requested, we should receive that early march.”

The slot autority has told luchtvaartnieuws that Vipair has not requested slots for flights from Amsterdam. “We do have a few slots available, but only at unfavourable times. For instance late in the morning or early in the afternoon. It will be very busy at AMS next year. More so than the previous summer.”

Waiting list.
Kranenburg still expects that early next year there are sufficient slots available. “There are always airlines that do not use their slots, or only use part of them”. According to the slot autority this is indeed the case, maar those free slots are awarded to airlines that are on a waiting list. “At the moment Vipair is not on that list. There are some 20 to 30 other airlines on that list.”

No slots at Schiphol will not mean the end for Vipair, says Kranenburg. “If we do not get slots for AMS, we will commence all flighst from DUS. But for now that is not something I am counting on. I expect that next year I will have two airbusses flying from Amsterdam!”.

I am not quite sure wether to believe this or not. Thing is, this is not the first tim Vipair has announced they want to start flying. This has happened twice before and obviously all the times the plans proved to be false.

The fact that Vipair has not even requested slots at AMS is dubious at best. I am very interested to hear if they have already requested slots at DUS. Personally I do not think so, but would like to be proven false.

Last time around was highly suspect though. Their logo was a carbon copy of the logo of a housing agent. They mentioned they where going to fly A300s but at the last moment those plans where cancelled because A300s where hard to get! Now that is of course nonsense as the A300 was stored by the dozens. Despite that their website managed to have a photo of an A320 in job sections for an A300 certified crew!

If this is not a hoax I wish them a lot of succes. The destinations may not be popular, but they won’t have much competition either. Another bonus is that Dutchbird will by then be no more (taken over by Holland EXEL). That will leave only three charter airlines in the Netherlands: Transavia (which is going more and more LCC), Martinair and the EXEL aviation group.