Aurigny’s second new toy G-VZON (another reggie related to Guernsey locations etc) flew their GR601 service LGW-GCI yesterday morning, and Captain’s pre-take off address included confirmation that it had entered service the day before.

Paul F

Good, so should guarantee that I get a new a/c on my trip there and back on Thurs/Fri.

This is very interesting because only last week I was reading an article about AirTran in (I think) ATW. In this article a senior manager was making a big point about how much they’d done to encourage staff to wear their uniform outside of work with pride, because previously staff were changing on arrival and departure from work. The article was suggesting that wearing the uniform with pride had been a good marketing tool, especially after the disappearance of the Valuejet brand, for whom staff appeared embarrased to work for.

I do think it’s a little petty TBH, I can imagine that the guy had to quickly pick up a child to get to the circus. For a variety of reasons we all occasionally have to do things after work without time to go home.

Has the A345 got a rear gunner’s turret then ? :confused:

I don’t think so. I think it was designed by the French team not the German team :diablo:

I’m sure it was the A380. It passed over Southampton at 14:15 Sunday, at about 15k feet. Does the time match with it’s T/o or arrival today? I’d suggest it was going in, judging its speed. It would be arriving at 14:30/14:45ish.

I’ve only ever seen the production line ones (And one Airbus Flyer) in Toulouse.
This A/c looked too stubby for a 747 and far too short for A340. (White fuse, red Engines).

If the engines were red then it wasn’t a QF A380, as their engines are majority white (with a small snippet of red). All of the QF flights are scheduled to arrive in the early morning period, so unless it was 6 hours late then it wasn’t a QF aircraft of any sort.

I’m not sure what you mean by stubby and short, because the A380 (approx 72m long) is longer than the 747-400 (approx 71m) and the A340-300 (63m) and 500 (68m) and only a touch shorter than the A340-600 (75m).

There is a daily Virgin flight arriving from Shanghai with a scheduled time of 14.35, and it’s operated by an A340-600, so my guess is that is what you saw, or possibly their Dubai service if it was running late, also operated by an A346. Emirates’ A380s are scheduled to arrive earlier in the day, so unlikely to be those, but again they don’t have red engines.

It’s not a suprise, I have seen several airlines be quite negative about them, four engines in this day and age cannot compete with two. That is why most never returned for more, or took up options.

You notice Virgin and Airbus are very quiet on the 4 engines vs 2 these days! Economically it makes no sense, and I think the environmental lobby far outcries the opponents of long haul twin-ops.

I’m afraid you have me totally wrong there RDC…

I apologise, I must have misunderstood things you’d written in the past, so apologies. You should have done what I did, and go into the lucrative world of consulting much sooner 😉

Now see you were doing quite well until that. There simply is no logic or defence for arguing that a EUR10 increase in the cost of travel is unacceptable if its applied by the government, but it is acceptable if its applied by the airline. That’s the issue. Having to pay EUR10 extra either drives business away or it doesn’t irrespective of who the EUR10 goes to. But of course Scumbag O’Riley wants the proletariat to believe that the government is evil and he’s a saint. And many of them are stupid enough to believe it (not suggesting you are stupid, by the way). I’ll give him his dues – and I said this previously – he is clever, very clever. Cleverer in fact than many of his customers, which is the one and only reason why his business as successful as it is.

Andy

We may have to agree to disagree on this. As you may know, I am an Aviation Consultant, and a large amount fo my work is involved with EZY/RYR and I understand their cost/income basis very well. I have data on my laptop illustrating the effect on their bottom line of pricing changes at STN for example, and where they have tried to pass that on to customers the effect it has had on bookings. To some extent, they often absorb these costs, but this then affects their bottom line, and they are entitled to make money.

If you do not like flying with these airlines then you will not have booked 1p fares (including all taxes/charges) that many of us have, and therefore you will not be in the mindset of “well it was is cheap it would be rude not to”….and that is what is lost when the airline can no longer absorb the charges (because it erodes their bottomline too much). But where I have booked 1p fares, all included, I wouldn’t have booked them at £10.01 because I didn’t NEED to travel, it was a whim generated purely by low fares.

Another major factor we see (and tourism authorities tell me over and over again, including most recently last week) is that people don’t expect or want to pay lots for their travel for weekend breaks etc. Instead they prefer to book better quality hotels and eat in better restaurants at their destination. The words that I hear over and over again, from hoteliers, tourism bodies and other organisations when discussing air service need is “they decide on a destination based on where they can go for the lowest fare, and then book everything after that”. So the scenario of applying €10 to every fare means that Dublin may be €10.01 rather than €0.01 to go elsewhere (admittedly the 1p fare is not around at the moment, £1 is generally the lowest including all taxes/charges) and so they will choose to go elsewhere, and therefore demand drops for the Dublin services, which affects load factor, which is the important element of the business models of these airlines.

The point is, it’s not that people stop flying because of €10, it’s the fact that they choose to fly to other destinations and demand drops for the higher charged service. So back to the €5 check-in, that becomes a constant applied to all fares, but the passenger choosing a weekend break would still need to pay €10 more to go to Dublin than say, Riga.

If you think it doesn’t have an effect then look at the way bookings dropped off at Norwich when they imposed a £5 departure tax. The Airport finally had a low fares (well FlyBe anyway) offer and then shot themselves in the foot because the airline was having to sell very cheap seats to generate demand, and once £5 was added many passengers decided they had more choice at lower cost at STN and went back to flying from there. Whilst Dublin doesn’t have an alternative airport for those locals (unlike NWI/STN), it does have competitor airports for inbound travellers, and they are spread Europe wide because the destination is no longer the driver behind travel for many people.

For yourself, because you choose to fly with more traditional network carriers, then by default you have the luxury of choosing your destination and paying the fare, because you’re not so price sensitive through your own choice. Furthermore, €10 on a £150 is a much lower % addition than on a €1 fare. For these reason, I wonder if perhaps you cannot relate to the effects of these charges.

You can see yourself that these airlines have generated huge amounts of new travel and have significantly changed the way in which people choose to use their leisure/holiday time. In many cases, the traditional summer holiday has been replaced by multiple short breaks, all as a result of low fares, and when you account for this, then you understand why the “where can I get for the lowest price” effect is so very important.

Now see you were doing quite well until that.

Is that a thawing towards understanding their approach on the other “pick and mix” element I argued about?:dev2::diablo:

Ooooh, I love these sorts of debates, something to get our teeth into, and hopefully helps people understand the industry better.

Its amazing how Scumbag O’Riley seems to think that the Irish government’s EUR10.00 tax will damage his passenger numbers, and yet his airline’s own EUR5.00 each way online “checkin tax” he’s introducing in May is OK!!! What a t**t that man is!

Andy

I appreciate your career was affected by this airline, and I am sorry for that, but sometimes Andy I do wonder whether you can’t see the logic because of your anger?

I read an interesting piece the other day in which US Airways was praising other US carriers for their introduction of ancillary charges, essentially “pick and mix” flying. I know you keep thinking that MOL adds costs left right and centre, and you are right, but he has shareholders to deliver to, and has to do this just as the airlines that you think are so heroic do. So MOL attracts you in with a low fare and then makes you add on extras, big whoopy do….the others start the other way round, they charge a higher fare, but include everything to start with. So going back to my pick and mix analagy, think back to going into woolworths (who? what? where?), pick and mix as a product worked well because you could buy what you wanted. If you liked fizzy cola bottles, but not cherry lips then you could buy just fizzy cola bottles, but if you liked both you could choose to buy both (and/or whatever else you wanted). Otherwise you had to buy a ready mixed bag, which also included those strawberry laces that you hate, but they were there and you couldn’t do anything about it.

The same is true of modern flying, if you want to pay £30 for a fare and then add a bag at £9 (or whatever price it is now) and then add a cup of tea onboard for £3 and end up spending £42 per leg, or £84 in total then that should is fine, especially if you decide you can do away with the bag and carry it onboard and would prefer to carry on a bottle of coke. I admit that charging for non-discretionary items, such as online check-in, seems a bit much but I guess the end result is the same, he could put up his fares, or he can keep them lower and make you pay it…..the point is, this becomes just clever marketing, not ripping people off, the cost has to be paid somehow. On the other hand, if you like to pay £150 for your return with BA and have the free bag and free cup of tea then you can, but if you prefer to pay £150 with BA but then only take hand baggage anyway then you start paying for things you’re not using…and even worse…subsidising those who do want to check-in a bag because the cost is split across all passengers!

I’m not having a go, you know I think your input is great to many topics, but I do sometimes feel you go MOL/RYR bashing because of a grudge (and you’re entitled to that) rather than through sensible analysis.

In the case of the €10 then yes, it will make a difference because it will effect those who buy the cheapest seats and put bums on seats. The €5 for check-in is RYR’s problem, i.e. they cannot keep costs low enough for all travellers and so will price some out of the market, but in the case of the Tourist Tax, the airline is loosing passengers at the lower end of it’s market because if you only pay €1 for a flight because it’s cheap then you may think twice before paying €11, accepting that all other elements remain static (taxes and discretionary costs).

The Birmingham Post today has an article about Akal Air who are to offer a through service from Birmingham to Amristar via Vienna from next month. It states that Air India’s BHX route was more profitable than any of the LHR routes yet chose to gave BHX up in favour of LHR so they could preserve “valuable LHR slots”. In this era of losses, why would an airlne sacrifice a profitable route?

Article is here

It’s not quite so simple. I think the profitability of the London-India routes has taken a pounding because of competition, as pointed out by Future Pilot. Virgin has just announced a temporary suspension of services to Mumbai due to excess capacity and falling demand, I assume they’re hoping one of the Indian carries will go belly-up in the near future to reduce capacity.

Anyway, back to the main point. I do not see any assertion that London is not profitable for Air India, purely that they claim BHX was more profitable (probably on a per passenger basis, not a city pair basis), and therefore they are not necessarily operating a loss making route to LHR. They will be keen to retain London in their network because they will want to retain customer loyalty in order to preserve the whole of their network. If they drop London and those business travellers using London switch to one of the other airlines, then they are likely to switch to the other airlines full stop as their network grows. I think this would have been an easy decision for AI. Once they’d given up slots at LHR they would have struggled to get back such favourable positions.

If I’m honest I’m not sure how much I believe the statement anyway, and I note it comes with no reference which always rings alarm bells. Modern journalism takes hear-say and makes it fact!:eek: