Katie Lawson on LinkedIn: Rex to offer status match against Qantas, Virgin Australia (2024)

Can·cill·ary Revenuedefinition: revenue created from the sale of tickets of already cancelled flights.This was a phrase that I coined this morning on #LinkingtheTravelIndustry with Riaan van Schoor & Ann Cederhall. We were discussing what is happening at Qantas where they were selling tickets to flights that were already cancelled. This may have led to the CEO resigning and earning a record bonus in the process.Now before we all go judging, how is this different from the idea of a minimum viable product(MVP) or a minimum marketable product. Have we all been selling products that were not quite there yet?#qantas #travelindustry

28

6 Comments

Belfast airport named most punctual in the UK

5

🛩️UNITED AIRLINE CHANGES💺🚨 Update update update 🚨 📅 Effective: Thursday, October 26, 2023Starting this Thursday, United Airlines is rolling out their brand new way for boarding, called #WILMA!🤔 What's #WILMA, you ask? Well, it stands for "Window - Middle - Aisle" and will soon be United Airlines new boarding process.😳 Here's the scoop: Passengers will soon be boarding by Window seats first, then Middle seats, and finally Aisle seats. The goal of the airline for this new process is to expedite boarding, by ensuring those traveling will no longer have to cross over each other, to reach their window or middle seat. Please note if you're flying with United Airlines in economy and do not have priority boarding, you will most likely be impacted by this change.😬Are you ready to embrace this change?💺Which seat do you prefer when flying?❓Will this affect your choice in airlines when booking your next flight?Share your thoughts with us in the comments! 💭*To learn more visit the full article here:https://lnkd.in/g9GVZaNM#TravelAlert #UnitedAirlines #TravelTrends #AirlineUpdates #UnitedWilma #BoardingTime #EconomyClass #WorldTraveler #malindathetravelgirl #travelgirladventures

2

Akron - Canton Airport is by far a more convenient option.

5

What is the right loyalty strategy for a leisure carrier?Today, Emirates announced, to the general surprise for everybody, a new FFP partnership with German leisure carrier Condor Flugdienst GmbH. Condor itself doesn't have an own loyalty program, but partners already with the program of Alaska Airlines as well as with PAYBACK in Germany. Previously, it was for long time partner in the program, before the relationship between Condor and Lufthansa seriously deteriorated following LOT Polish Airlines' attempt of a take-over of Condor, which finally failed.But back to the present and the question this raises from a #loyalty perspective: What kind of strategy is the right one for a leisure carrier, especially when engaged on lucrative long-haul business and, of course, selling seats on a stand-alone basis?The answer seems not so easy as the spectrum reaches from airlines like Corsair and WestJet offering more or less carefully developed programs to SCOOT'AIR, ZIPAIR and Eurowings using the program of their respective parent companies to airlines like Air Transat and Beond ignoring the topic.There is some doubt whether Condor's approach really combines the best of both worlds - it is probably rather the opposite: It creates costs for buying miles from its partners, but offers only very limited CRM opportunities due to the lack of access to data.With the market moving more towards leisure, some important strategic questions should though be raised in that area - and certainly not only by such typical leisure carriers!But kudos to Emirates for a smart move, adding a lot of value to its numerous members in Germany!#globalflight

27

3 Comments

Low cost Australian airline Bonza is due to ferry in its first wet-leased B737-8 in the next 24 hours.C-FLKC (msn 61807) is one of two aircraft coming fromFlair Airlinesto fly for Bonza over the upcoming Australian summer. 777 Partners back both airlines. The second Flair jet, C-FLHI (msn 61804) is due to ferry out from Canada in early December. The two aircraft will take the stock of Bonza B737-8s flying this summer to six and support the launch of its operations fromGold Coast Airport(OOL).Bonza started scheduled ops early this year from itsSunshine Coast Airport(MCY) base. More recently, it announced it would begin flying from the Gold Coast (about 2.5 hours down the M1 motorway) in mid-November. Since then, it has been interesting to monitor Bonza quietly but surely shifting a very big part of its network focus to the southern airport.In the first week of January 2024, the peak period for both leisure traveller-orientated airports as the January summer school holidays kick in,ch-aviationschedules data reveals Gold Coast Airport will handle 84 Bonza aircraft movements, flying to and from 14 airports, including the more recently announced flights to Mt Isa (ISA) and Darwin (DRW).In the same week, Sunshine Coast Airport will handle 66 Bonza aircraft movements coming to and from 11 airports, also including its new twice-weekly Darwin roundtrips from MCY.Assuming these flights are well patronized, and if Bonza can't fill its planes and make bank in the first week of January, you'd have to question its business model, the airline will move almost 15,500 passengers through OOL compared to 12,250 pax through MCY.The demography nerd in me thinks the Gold Coast is a better fit for Bonza than the Sunshine Coast. However, that is based on the gross generalization that the Gold Coast is a less expensive place to holiday than the Sunshine Coast, and the Gold Coast crowd better aligns with the Bonza brand than the Sunshine Coast crowd, neither of which is necessarily true.Either way, it will be interesting watching this play out.#aviation #airlines #news #wetlease #ACMI #holidays #boeing #737MAX #planes #goldcoast

162

6 Comments

Can I choose my seats on both flights of a connecting itinerary?Yes, in most cases, you can select your seats for both flights when booking a connecting itinerary through Happy Fares. However, seat availability may vary depending on the airline and fare class.

1

Italy's ITA Airways officially opened for sale today its latest medium haul destination to be served by its premium configured Airbus A321Neos. New 4 weekly Dakar-Rome service shall be launched effective 03Jul operated by the above stated aircraft which has 12 flat beds in business class. The schedule is as follows:Wed Fri Sat Sun AZ 854 Dep FCO 1530 Arr DSS 1930AZ 855 Dep DSS 2340 Arr FCO 0720+1Though in the past Italian carriers such as Alitalia and Air Italy have tried but failed on the Dakar route, it was largely due to wrong commercial practices with Air Italy being the front runner in that aspect. IG (Air Italy) failed on the Dakar line because even though it had a monopoly on the route, it was always the cheapest option + selling low season level fares in high season + it was fully dependant on p2p VFR traffic bound to/from Milan. ITA Airways latest entry into Dakar has started off on a positive commercial note as it is utilizing the right sized aircraft i.e. A321Neo and the launch is from the onset of the summer high season. The p2p Rome-Dakar market demand was 36K in 2023 versus 105K for Milan, 26K for Bologna and 15K for Venice. This is where AZ should take advantage of its schedule and promote aggressively domestic Italy on the Dakar line rather than connections to other tier 1 cities. Definitely the route cannot survive on p2p traffic alone and in the low season, it would need all the network support it can derive from other connecting cities such as GVA ZRH FRA LYS ATH AMS LGW ATH BRU CDG and MUC. With Air Senegal no longer in the picture, its direct competitior would be Neos who fly 2 weekly MXP-DSS + 1 weekly FCO-DSS. However with AZ starting 4 weekly FCO-DSS of its own, one does not expect Neos to continue with its own Rome-Dakar service after summer high season ends in early September. One thing is for sure that ITA will lose a lot of $$$ operating Rome-Dakar as the yields are not high. The average fare for this 6 hour flight in 2023 was US$ 312 one way with YQ included ! The key here is to limit the bleeding by focusing more on higher yielding O&Ds and try to fill the J cabin as much as possible since there wont be any incremental cargo revenue possible in the belly due to the amount of baggage that pax shall check in herewith.#dakar #senegal #italytravel #rome #fco #itaairways #a320neo #a321 #skyteam #staralliance

76

3 Comments

🛩️UNITED AIRLINE CHANGES💺🚨 Update update update 🚨 📅 Effective: Thursday, October 26, 2023Starting this Thursday, United Airlines is rolling out their brand new way for boarding, called #WILMA!🤔 What's #WILMA, you ask? Well, it stands for "Window - Middle - Aisle" and will soon be United Airlines new boarding process.😳 Here's the scoop: Passengers will soon be boarding by Window seats first, then Middle seats, and finally Aisle seats. The goal of the airline for this new process is to expedite boarding, by ensuring those traveling will no longer have to cross over each other, to reach their window or middle seat. Please note if you're flying with United Airlines in economy and do not have priority boarding, you will most likely be impacted by this change.😬Are you ready to embrace this change?💺Which seat do you prefer when flying?❓Will this affect your choice in airlines when booking your next flight?Share your thoughts with us in the comments! 💭*To learn more visit the full article here:https://lnkd.in/g9GVZaNM#TravelAlert #UnitedAirlines #TravelTrends #AirlineUpdates #UnitedWilma #BoardingTime #EconomyClass #WorldTraveler #malindathetravelgirl #travelgirladventures

Virgin Atlantic has announced that due to commercial reasons, it shall be suspending lights to Austin, USA effective 07Jan-24. The flight is flown 3 weekly using a B789. In exchange, VS also announced that it shall be boosting its services to Miami to double daily in summer 2024 + increasing Dubai to daily from Nov 2024 and increasing Barbados to double daily from 10Jan-24.Over the past 12 months, the p2p demand to/from London (LHR + LGW) for the above cities was as follows:Round trip pax belowDXB - 1,486,837AUS - 127,446MIA - 403,712BGI - 230,306If VS has some spare aircraft time in S24 season, I feel it should look at relaunching Accra or new services to Jeddah. My reasons are as follows:i. Both routes see high p2p demand for LON i.e. 208K ACC and 257K JEDii. Both routes would contribute a fair amount of feed to its trans-atlantic network + via DL code share iii. ACC was suspended in Sept 2013 by VS as at that time, it flew an inefficient A343 five weekly on the route when oil prices were high. Since then, the market dynamics has improved considerably with BA reaping the benefits by having a monopolistic hold flying 10 weekly this upcoming winter season. ACC will provide large amounts of belly cargo in both directions + decent premium cabin loads + good volume feed to U.S. East coast especially provided it operates the service using somewhat similar timings to that of BA. For VS at ACC, restarting with a 5 weekly A339Neo would be ideal to begin with as its on board product is reputely better than its B789. iv. Like ACC, JED-LON too sees one carrier having a monopolistic hold on the route with Saudia serving it 8 weekly to LHR + 4 to LGW respectively. However, SV is a fellow Sky-Team member which VS is apart of. If VS decides to launch JED, I feel it can prove to be a big hit with premium cabin pax for the main reason that it serves alcohol whilst SV does not. This is also why BA maintains a good market share in J/F cabins on LHR-KWI vs KU. With SV also in Sky Team, if VS schedules its services to connect via JED to regional MENA/Pakistan destinations offering good 2-way connections, it would benefit with bonus feed. Domestic code share via JED to RUH/DMM/AHB/MED are do able with multiple daily connections available.v. On the LON-JED route, VS will also attract year round group traffic for religious purposes (Umrah) from UK as well as trans-atlantic USA feed with DL code share support. With Saudi Govt focusing on tourism especially during winter season, it can be a new market for UK adventure travellers. For JED, as long as VS offers at least a 4 weekly service to begin with using A339Neos, it will be competitive.To conclude, both routes deserve new nonstop service by VS but I feel due to market stability, ease of forex repatriation + a bigger and richer p2p O&D segment, Jeddah would have a slight edge over Accra by being launched first.#virginatlantic #skyteam #a330 #b787 #jeddah #accra #ghana #lhr #heathrow

67

10 Comments