hiddeneuropeSumburgh Re-Opens after Three Days
Sumburgh Airport reopened at midday today, with flights departing to mainland Scotland, and starting to clear the huge backlog of would-be travellers delayed by Shetland fog for three days.
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Nicky
http://www.hiddeneurope.co.uk
hiddeneuropeAlpha One Website Updated
Dedicated followers of the Isle of Man’s most intriguing little airline might be interested to know that Alpha One Airways has updated its website, with a wholly new section devoted not to aviation but to overland travel. You can find it at:
http://www.flyalphaone.co.uk/teamphileas/
For those not familiar with the Gumball rally (alluded to on that webpage), it is not a race, but a non-competitive drive. For those tempted, the entry fee is a mere forty thousand pounds.
hiddeneuropeShould have mentioned the date: Tuesday 31 January. Sorry about that!
hiddeneuropePresentation on the Alpha One Success Story
As there’s seems to be a lot of interest in Alpha One on this board, I thought followers of this thread might be interested to know that the airline’s CEO is being funded by Scottish Enterprise to visit Scotland next week – doubtless an opportunity to spur young Scottish entrepreneurs into creating new start-up airlines.
Mr Halstead will be giving a public lecture on the Alpha One experience. The press material advertising the lecture gives the following background:
“Alpha One Airways now employs 10 people. Scheduled services commenced between Edinburgh and the Isle of Man on 14 December, initially with an eight seat Navajo Chieftain turboprop. Alpha One’s first BAE SYSTEMS Jetsream 31, 18-seater debuts on 30 January. Once the Edinburgh route is firmly bedded in, Alpha One will look to develop other routes. It is interested in Leeds and Cardiff, both from the Isle of Man.”
The public presentation is in Dundee at the rather aptly named Sensation Centre in Greenmarket. It is hosted by The Aspire Society, part of Scotland’s Young Entrepreneur Network. I understand that non-members are welcome, but tickets (which are free I think) must be obtained in advance. Call Marion Murray on 01382 305580. Arrive from 5.30 pm. for the lecture at 6 pm, and thereafter the chance to chat with Mr Halstead and others till about 8 pm. More details on http://www.aspiresociety.co.uk/TYN.php.
hiddeneuropeCan’t help you on the exact language of service agreements on US / Canada air services, but the US is (as mentioned earlier on this thread) really down on the idea on Canadian carriers ‘stealing’ domestic US traffic. So there are no sixth freedom thru routings at all, with a Canadian carrier starting in the US, stopping in Canada, then returning to the US. Even more, it is extremely difficult to book a journey from one US point to another US point via Canada. Try booking Los Angeles to Boston via Toronto with Air Canada and you’ll see that the booking engine simply won’t accept it. Even intermediaries (such as Expedia) won’t allow such bookings. A wonderful illustration of how the US, great chamption of free trade that it pretends to be, erects non-tariff barriers to free competition. Hope this helps you.
hiddeneuropeAlpha One December Passenger Figures
There has been some debate earlier in this thread about how many sectors Alpha One airlines has actually flown, with some contributors suggesting that scanning EDI and IOM arrival / departure boards might give a false picture of the vitality (or otherwise) of this young carrier. Some earlier commentators (eg. #277 above) have suggested that flights shown as ‘cancelled’ may actually nonetheless have operated.
But for those anxious to assess how things are actually going for Alpha One, a much better insight into the current status of Alpha One is provided by the official traffic figures for December 2005. Those show that, during its first eighteen days of operation (including oddball days like Christmas Day when no flight was scheduled), Alpha One Airways arranged for the carriage of 37 passengers in total. Those passengers were, as we know from this thread, all transported on other carriers (mainly HACS and Woodgate).
Others more familiar which this operation may want to comment on what this means, but I would just add the following. Where a passenger made an out and back flight (ie. two sectors), that counts as 2 in the figures. This figures show actual bodies flown, not revenue seats sold. In other words, if any seats were given away, then they are included in the figures. It is possible that the number of paying passengers may have been rather lower than the 37 folk flown in total.
From the original timetable published on 1 December (see #15 above), and allowing for no flying on Christmas Day, then it seems that Alpha One Airways scheduled sixty sectors to be flown during its first eighteen days of operation. Taking even the most generous view, that perhaps they really flew 30 sectors in total, that still implies little more than one passenger per flight. If we take the more conservative view suggested by airport departure and arrival boards, that Alpha One Airways flew perhaps only twenty sectors, that still amounts to less than two passengers per flight.
Hope this is of interest.
hiddeneuropeSixth Freedom
Oh, imagine a simple example. A Canadian carrier flying from Amnchorage to somewhere in the US main territory with a stop in Vancouver. Which freedom does it violate?
Well, that that violates no freedoms. It would be a classic example of sixth freedom. An Anchorage – Vancouver – Seattle routing by a putative Canadian registered airline would absolutely be sixth freedom. Interestingly, I am pretty confident that no such routing exists.
The US has always been very tetchy about granting fifth or sixth freedom or cabotage (ie. eight or ninth freedom) rights of any kind. So Air Canada flying (for example) a sixth freedom Chicago – Toronto – Boston route is a non-starter as far as the US authorities are concerned.
And (on cabotage) although BA has a London Heathrow – Chicago – Houston and return daily routing (BA294/5), it has no traffic rights on Chicago to Houston and return, which necessarily means artificially constrained low load factors on those internal US sectors. It was this that put paid to the old BA Gatwick-Phoenix-San Diego service.
I have one recent example of the US rarely giving eighth freedom rights to a non-US carrier. That was an Icelandair flight on this recent Christmas Day which flew Orlando – Boston – Reykjavik (effectively combining the Sunday Orlando to Iceland flight with the Sunday Boston to Iceland flight). I am told, and it appeared to be confirmed in the various airline booking sytems and databases (eg. OAG) that this flight was available to be booked purely for the domestic US sector from Florida up to Boston (FI658 at 17.10 ex ORL on 25.12.05, arriving Boston Logan at 19.45).
Even fifth freedom rights over US airports are exceedingly rare. Air Canada flights AC 045/6 are unusual exceptions. These are Sydney – Honolulu – Vancouver flights in which Air Canada have full fifth freedom rights to pick up and set down passengers in Honolulu. This is, I would think, only countenanced by the US authorities because it is a codeshare with UA. Even more unusual is the Saturday Iberia flight from San Pedro Sula (SAP) in Honduras to Miami (IB6132), which continues to Madrid. I believe it is possible to book SAP to MIA with Iberia, which makes this a rare and obscure one-off of the US granting fifth freedom rights to a non-US carrier.
I’ll think on the other points you make. You’re probing a bit beyond the margin of my knowledge of these complex issues of international regulatory regimes. But it’s made me think, and I’ve enjoyed contributing.
Nicky Gardner
hiddeneuropeSixth Freedom of the Air (and more!)
#14. Fascinating comments and queries.
Ah, that´s interesting! But the official regulations stated in #6 are hard to understand when considered closer.
You are absolutely right in inferring that it is the ‘sixth freedom’ that is most laced with ambiguity. I generally would tend towards the stricter definition, so ‘operated by a single carrier, with a single flight number from A to C, with an intermediate stop en route at B (where B is in the registered home country of the carrier, and A and B are, respectively, in different foreign territories) and capable of being ticketed on a single through flight coupon’. I would see the issue of deplaning en route as being secondary.
How does it compare with 2nd freedom? That is, is an aircraft making a 2nd freedom technical stop required to keep all passengers indoors and not let any of them out, even to stay in the airport transit zone until reembarking?
I think there is a big difference here. Oftentimes, less so nowadays that in the past, planes made technical stops in foreign countries en route. If they had traffic rights at the intermediate stop (as Aeroflot usually did on their Shannon stops), then that was a fifth freedom right. Where they had no rights to pick up or set down passengers at that intermediate foreign stop, then that was a second freedom right, even though passengers may deplane for a hour while stopping off (often for refuelling). Sixth freedom applies only where the stop off is not in a foreign country but in the registered home country of the carrier (so EI on BFS-SNN-JFK) or my modern TAROM example (in #13 above) with not just one but two sixth freedom stops en route in Romania while flying from Vienna to Munich. A quirky and a roundabout route, but a great example of ‘sixth freedom’.
Does 3rd/4th Freedom and lack of 6th mean that any aircraft used for 3rd/4th Freedom service must then be grounded in its home state until the next flight, even in case of once weekly flights?
No, not at all. It merely means that the carrier cannot advertise through flights with a single flight number and single coupon from A to C via its home country B. A modern example is Icelandair (FI) with a rich range of connections from Europe to North America via Keflavik in Iceland. London to Boston and Copenhagen to New York are examples. But Icelandair (FI) has no sixth freedom rights for flying between any mainland European State and any North American destination (either nonstop or via its Keflavik hub), so if you fly LHR to BOS with Icelandair you’ll have two coupons, two flight numbers, even though the transit through the Keflavik hub is usually pretty painless. But the distinction is critical in marketing terms, as the flights show up in online booking systems as connecting flights, so are lower in the listings than ‘direct’ flights.
Also, how does 6th Freedom compare with 8th and 9th?
Sixth freedom is different from eighth or ninth. With the sixth freedom the intermediate stop is always in the home country of the carrier. Eighth and ninth are examples of the high theology of what’s called cabotage. In my earlier post (#13 above), I gave the example of a new flight by a Faroese carrier which from later this year will operate twice weekly from Vagar airport in the Faroes to London Stansted with an en route stop at Sumburgh in the Shetlands. Because the carrier has traffic rights from the Shetland to London sector, passengers flying that sector will be ‘eighth freedom’ passengers.
Nice examples of modern ninth freedom flights are Easyjet from Paris to Nice. Or, within the UK, VLM (a Dutch registered carrier) from Liverpool to London City. Or the new Air Berlin flights between Manchester and London Stansted. In fact European aviation legislation grants almost universal seventh, eight and ninth freedom rights to EU registered carriers. Although you didn’t specifically ask about seventh freedom examples, there are plenty around (eg. EasyJet from Berlin to Barcelona or Naples).
What is the legal status of flight starting and ending in the same country, with a stop in a foreign country?
Here you have raised something that is not, as far as I know, actually covered by the nine defined freedoms, and is actually very rare. You know I’ve really racked my brains and cannot think of a single modern example. But I can give you a couple of historic cases. For a while in the 90s, I regularly used a now defunct carrier (Macair) to fly from Derry City (LDY) to Birmingham and / or London Stansted. Some flights stopped en route at Carrickfinn (CFN) in Donegal. And for years Manx had a wonderful Sunday afternoon flight from Manchester to Stansted with two en route stops in a foreign land en route, one at Shannon and the other at Waterford. That example also featured in the article in hidden europe magazine (I gave a live link to the full pdf file in #13 above).
Nicky Gardner
hiddeneuropeFreedoms of the Air
This is a very interesting query, and #6 gives the regulatory position absolutely spot-on. But I wonder whether some of the other comments are actually correct. In the days before electronic ticketing and we all used airline coupons, the classic ‘sixth freedom’ flights were those that took the passenger on a single coupon (and usually without change of plane) from Country A to Country C via the registered home State of the airline (Country B). There have been some celebrated examples: with Aer Lingus in the mid nineties from New York to Belfast (touching down in Shannon en route), with Aeroflot from London to Tokyo with a Moscow stop en route (which still exists today as the twice weekly SU581 LHR-SVO-NRT, which can still be ticketed on a single coupon though nowadays passengers do need to change planes in Moscow). Duo’s announcement, just before their eventual demise on 1 May 2004, of a proposed Berlin Tegel – Birmingham – Shannon routing would have been, if the carrier has not gone bankrupt, a good example of a ‘sixth freedom’ flight.
The timetables abound with some splendid modern examples. My favourite in the current winter schedules is TAROM Flight RO303 from Vienna to Munich every morning (Mon-Fri) at 11.10 am. This journey is a through flight (no need to deplane en route) with the routing: Vienna-Cluj-Sibiu-Munich. Just under seven hours on a ATR-42, and actually, for a Y-Class single, a few euros cheaper than the direct LH or OS flights.
This TAROM example features in the January issue of hidden europe magazine which is, as it happens, published today. To access the full article in pdf format click here or go to the hidden europe website (http://www.hiddeneurope.co.uk) and follow the link to the table of contents of the current issue. The article is entitled “flights of fancy”.
#4 suggests that CSA might have some sixth freedom flights. Not in the current timetables, as it happens, nor I am aware of any recent examples (assuming we are talking Czech Airlines here, and not China Southern Airlines!). But CSA (OK) do have some really interesting fifth freedom flights. They have a twice weekly flight from Dubai to Colombo (OK188) and a daily evening flight (except Sats) from Marseilles to Barcelona (OK696). Both originate in Prague.
That same article in hiddeneurope referred to above discusses and has a listing of interesting European fifth and sixth freedom flights in the present winter schedules. Some of my favourite fifth freedom flights nowadays are Berlin to Moscow with MIAT Mongolian, Oslo to Copenhagen with Pakistan International (on a 747), Zürich to Manchester with Singapore Airlines (also a 747, but really pricey), Frankfurt to Geneva with Saudi Arabian Airlines (75 mins and 300 miles on a 777!). When the Faroese carrier Atlantic Airways (RC) starts Shetland to London Stansted later this year that will be an example of an ‘eighth freedom’ flight. But that’s another story!
The right of a carrier to operate connecting flights (ie. Lufthansa flying a passenger from Detroit to Frankfurt and then onward with a connecting flight to Tel Aviv) has been relatively unfettered, and has, I believe, not generally been seen as an expression of sixth freedom rights. That Lufthansa example (cited by #3 above) is replicated across the world: anyone flying from a UK airport with KLM to Amsterdam and then on with KLM to a third country for example. In the days before electronic ticketing and we all used airline coupons these were flights that required two coupons, so less truly an expression of sixth freedom rights that my Aer Lingus, Aeroflot, Duo and TAROM examples above.
Hope these few thoughts help. What a complex subject! I’m sure folk will leap in and correct if I’ve not got details absolutely right.
hiddeneuropeCorrection to above figures. Sorry for my haste.
Up to and including today.
30 sectors scheduled.
12 flown by HACS.
2 flown by Woodgate.
16 cancelled.
hiddeneuropeMust a carrier actually fly to retain a licence (re:#264 above)
Gonzo’s question (#264 above) about whether an air carrier needs to fly a certain percentage of its flights in order to maintain a valid licensing status is an interesting one. I believe that the answer, in the context of the carrier being discussed here (ie. Alpha one Airways) is no. The airline is registered under Manx law, and the normal provisions of the UK Civil Aviation Authority play out differently in this case. (Though even in Great Britain, many airlines ‘sit’ on Route Licences between Britain and far flung parts of the world without actually using them. There have been historically famous examples of the likes of Virgin, BA and bmi applying for licences and then never using them).
The CAA’s Official Record Series 1 Part 3 is the key document. Near the very start it reads:
“Air operators which are registered or have their principal place of business in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, both of which are outside the EEA, are not eligible under the Council Licensing Regulation to hold Operating Licences and do not benefit from the general access to intra-EEA routes conferred by the Council Market Access Regulation. Channel Islands and Isle of Man-based firms which operate UK-registered aircraft generally need instead to hold Air Transport Licences (ATLs), though there are some exemptions from this need.”
Later the same document details criteria for retention of an ATL. Failure to use the ATL is not of itself grounds for it to be revoked. The Civil Aviation Authority does lay down other criteria for retention: issues of safety, financial probity and maintaining adequate liability cover. I guess it is possible that an airline with an improbably large number of cancellations might raise eyebrows, but, particularly with a new carrier, I suspect regulators would be loathe to intervene unless there was a very strong consumer interest that suggested such a need. It is, after all, well known that new carriers often have teething problems.
Gonzo’s comment probably derives from the need to retain landing slots (not licences) by using them. For much of 2005, Qantas ran an entirely empty plane from Heathrow to Manchester at about 9.30 am each morning. This had nothing to do with any need to retain a route licence, but was rather to ensure that Qantas held onto a precious Heathrow runway slot. At airports where competition for slots is fierce, the ‘use it or lose it’ principle still holds good. I doubt such considerations obtain in the case of EDI and IOM.
By this evening Alpha one will have been in the air (or, more often, not in the air) for eight working days. Their flight schedules (see #15 above) provide for 12 return flights per week on IOM-EDI. Of the 26 sectors which they would have been expected to have flown by this evening, I think the present tally is as follows:
10 sectors flown by Haverfordwest Air Charter Services (trading as Fly Wales)
2 sectors flown by Woodgate Aviation
14 sectors cancelled.
But my figures may not be absolutely correct, and I hope others can correct me if necessary.
Sorry for the wordiness in this long posting, but Gonzo’s query was an interesting and important one.
NSG
hiddeneuropeNAURU AND KIRIBATI LOSES ALL THEIR SCHEDULED SERVICES
Steve’s post (above) about yet another aircraft repossession looks as though it might go unremarked, so let me comment. Air Nauru’s loss of its single aircraft is actually a catastrophe for not just the isolated Republic of Nauru (in Oceania) but also for another independent nation state: Kiribati. These two very isolated countries have always been very poorly served by commercial air services. Kiribati has no planes of its own, and Nauru had just the one 737 – that which has now been repossessed. No foreign carrier flies into either country.
The Naura 737 provided lifeline air services from Nauru to Fiji, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands and Australia. The Fiji service stopped en route at Tawara in Kiribati, giving that country its sole connection with the outside world. Living, as most of here do, in developed parts of the world where we take commercial air service as a given, it’s perhaps no bad thing to spare a thought this week for two entire nations that have just slipped off the aviation map.
hiddeneuropeINFORMATION SOURCES
It is slightly disarming for relatively new members of this forum always to be challenged by one member (Bmused55) to cite the ‘information sources’ for any comment they make. The fact that I have made relatively few posts says nothing of the authority that might, or indeed might not, lie behind any comment that I post. Like many with an interest in European civil aviation, I browse this and other boards. I would invite Bmused55 to look at the half dozen or so posts I’ve made here – all, I think, very factual and all based on hard information (including my sole earlier post in this thread which gave, for the first time, the proposed schedules for Alpha One Airways). It is by the accuracy of those previous posts that I would ask to be judged. If contributors are required by Bmused55 to cite a verifiable reference for every single fact they cite, it will merely discourage many, like myself, from contributing to this excellent forum.
hiddeneuropeALPHA ONE WET LEASE WITH FLY WALES
As already reported, this morning’s departure from IOM is rescheduled to 11 am. Today is, as it happens, the last day of the present lease arrangement under which Alpha One Airways contracted Haverfordwest Air Charter Services (which trades as Fly Wales) to fly a limited series of IOM – EDI flights. Fly Wales are reported to have been surprised to have secured this charter, as the initial approach to them was only late on Tuesday afternoon, 13th December (the eve of Alpha One’s planned debut on the EDI-IOM route). It will be interesting to see if, from tomorrow, another licensed carrier will be flying on behalf of Alpha One.
This interesting debate here, which I’ve only sort of half followed, raises the question of when you can legitimately call yourself an ‘airline’. Alpha One Airways seems really not to be an airline at all, but rather merely a contractor that arranges charter flights. It veers towards being an entirely virtual company. It outsources everything. A Staffordshire call centre is contracted to answer the phone, but has, since Saturday 10 December, declined to actually take any bookings. Earlier commentators here have quoted press reports that Alpha One employs 26 staff at Canary Wharf in London – it is hard to fathom quite what all those folk actually do, since when almost 100% of the business activity is outsourced, that leaves perilously little left: perhps they are all working on getting some functionality into the website.
hiddeneuropeHelicopters on Scheduled Services in Europe
Actually, this thread overlooks the fact that helicopters have often provided an integral element of aviation schedules across Europe. Even in England, there was a while back a LGW – LHR helicopter service. Sometimes these service may not appear within Amadeus or Sabre, or in the OAG flight guide, but they are nonetheless regular sceduled services.
And, even today, none of the domestic services within the Faroe Islands are fixed-wing… all are helicopters. even including Europe’s best value flight, for details of which see here.
Hope this is of interest.
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