Strategy – Page 1021
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FLEETS
Jet convenience Ansett regional operator Kendell Airlines is to acquire 12 new 50-seat regional jets to upgrade its network in Eastern Australia. The new aircraft will be introduced from November 1999, but no decision has been made between the Bombardier Canadair CRJ-200 and Embraer RJ-145 models. ...
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as sell-off row surfaces
India's mercurial foreign ownership rules are again causing controversy, with an apparent split between ministries over whether airline partners will be allowed to buy shares in either Air-India or Indian Airlines as they come up for privatisation. Civil aviation minister Ananth Kumar plans strict enforcement of the domestic aviation ...
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SAA gets competitive
South African Airways (SAA), now under its new chief executive Coleman Andrews, has laid out plans to give British Airways much stronger competition on the lucrative London routes and may be seeking closer ties with Virgin Atlantic to help achieve its goal. SAA recently poached Virgin's general manager for ...
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Sun Air seeks a listing
A second South African carrier, Sun Air, is planning to seek a listing on the Johannesburg stock exchange. Comair, which operates under a franchise agreement with British Airways, listed in July and Sun Air now plans to follow suit in around 2000. Managing director Johan Borstlap says that he ...
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Current outlook
There are still some glimmers despite the gloom, it seems. Although there is little doubt that the world is poised for downturn, the latest projections coming out for the airline industry, if not exactly buoyant, are at least cautiously optimistic. The new passenger forecasts from the International Air Transport ...
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Why slots maynot be enough
Airline competition authorities may be looking in the wrong direction with demands for slot surrender to tame the global alliances. As the champions of competition continue to do battle over transatlantic airline alliances, it may be worth taking time out to reflect on exactly what they hope to achieve and ...
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Air France faces domestic challenge
The going promises to get tough for Air France as European competitors take up positions in its home market, snapping up some key French regional carriers. In the latest deal, Swissair has stepped in to acquire a 44% stake in Air Littoral. The partnership now gives Swissair a ...
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Balkan and Malev face sale
The Bulgarian Government is on the verge of selling a controlling stake in its national carrier, Balkan Bulgarian. The buyer is a locally based consortium, calling itself Balkan Air, made up of management, local financiers and a US institutional investor. The original offer is understood to be a straight ...
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Mega-merger cooks up charter consolidation
Consolidation in the UK holiday market has created a third vertically integrated giant, with the announcement that Thomas Cook is to grow again through a merger with the Carlson Leisure Group. Thomas Cook, which has only just swallowed Sunworld and Flying Colours, will now emerge as a $40 billion travel ...
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Fresh start for Virgin Express
The move by Virgin Express to establish a new Irish subsidiary in Shannon will, alongside its fledgling French operation, give the carrier the resources and cost structure it needs to pursue growth. Gus Carbonell, director of marketing and planning at the Brussels-based carrier, says the heavy social charges attached ...
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CARGO chasing the value chain
The cargo business may once have languished as the Cinderella of the airline industry, perpetually under the shadow of its more glittering cousins in the passenger business. But those days have long since passed. Not only is air cargo now recognised as a lucrative market in its own right, ...
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POLAR steering a new course
Good navigators, whether in cockpits or corner offices, sense when it is time to change course. The navigators for Long Beach-based Polar Air Cargo think that the time is now. But knowing when to change is only part of their challenge; they also must know what to change and what ...
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Stormy weather?
This year's hurricane season has been unkind to the Caribbean, with Georges cutting a particularly devastating swathe through many of the region's islands. But for the local airlines, hurricanes are the least of their worries. Just ask Conrad Aleong, who stepped in this year to take the helm of ...
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Identity crisis
Europe's regional airline executives could be excused for feeling pleased with themselves as they gathered in Hanover for the annual meeting of the European Regions Airline Association (ERA). The industry is again heading for double digit growth this year, expanding at around twice the speed of the majors. Load ...
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Routes 98
Not so long ago, the idea of airport marketing may well have sounded like a contradiction in terms to the jaded airline route planner. Airport operators looked more like immovable institutions, to be worked around rather than with. But if airports were late to the art of marketing, then ...
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Gaining an edge
Managers may dream of introducing the ground-breaking innovation that reshapes the industry. Or of the revolution that launches their airline to new heights of sustained performance. But in today's real world of increasingly competitive marketplace, victories tend to be smaller, more fleeting and harder to win. Welcome to the age ...
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Brussels has slots issue on hold
While Europe's major airlines continue to do battle with the competition authorities in Brussels over transatlantic alliances, it appears that the tussle has quietly claimed another victim - the long-promised European Commission (EC)rules on slot distribution. The EC's transport directorate (DGVII), under Neil Kinnock, started working on a new ...
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A Renaissance hub
With the opening of the new Malpensa airport, northern Italy may at last achieve its ambition of challenging northern Europe's major hubs. On the face of it, the transfer of international flights to Milan's shiny new airport at Malpensa should hardly have caused much of a fuss. Yet fuss ...