It has been a positive day for the airline industry as Air New Zealand was amongst Air China and Australian budget carrier Virgin Blue to report a recovery in profits. Air China announced first quarterly profits were up 60 per cent on 2009 when the economic down turn started to show in decreasing passenger numbers.
Whilst these results are positive many airlines remain cautious, which reflects the general mood of economists throughout the world.
Airbus and Boeing have travelled to the Farnborough air show with backlogs still around historic highs, regardless of the impressive fall in new net orders that has followed the credit crunch.
According to Flightglobal’s analysis the leading ACAS fleet database shows that as the significant ramp-up in orders are known to have collapsed within the last 24 months, by the end of June both manufacturers still held a combined backlog of 6,555 aircraft (4,165 narrowbodies and 2,390 widebodies).
It is down a relatively modest 10% from the height of two years ago, when numbers hit 7,299, nonetheless it is still in excess of twice the volume on the height of the last boom period a decade ago.
Airbus, boosted by the Emirates order for 32 A380s, goes to the show with its widebody backlog at an historic high.
The United Airlines order for 25 Boeing 787s and 25 Airbus A350s served to push the net order intake for widebodies to 122 in the first half of 2010.
A year ago, in the wake of the Paris air show, the first half net orders for widebodies were standing at a negative 34 after having a wave of cancellations.
Narrowbody net orders placed have still to demonstrate any signs of recovering immediately after their dramatic slide of the past three years, standing at just 91 new net orders for the first half of 2010, below the 150 posted at the half-way stage last year.
The 787 Dreamliner is Boeing’s most innovative plane yet, not least because it is the first airplane which has a fuselage made out of composite material rather than aluminium sheets riveted together. It’ll be light and fast – and its Rolls-Royce and General Electric engines will emit 20% less co2 than similarly-sized planes do today, Boeing insists.
Boeing 787 Becomes The First Composite Airliner To Fly
Following its first flight in December 2009, half a dozen Dreamliners have been criss-crossing the skies over Seattle, conducting continual flight tests. This weekend, the aircraft is set to land at Farnborough in England for its first appearance at the Farnborough air show where it is anticipated to be the main attraction.
Manufacturing any aircraft is definitely an incredibly manual process that requires great skills – a great deal more so than car production, in particular, where robots are utilized extensively. But in the case of the Dreamliner, the challenges are greater than normal.
The laborers here have had to familiarise themselves with numerous new technologies, ranging from complicated electrics to new materials. They’ve also had to have difficulty both with poor logistics management and with parts shortages, resulting from Boeing’s bungled effort to outsource much of the job to external suppliers. Probably the biggest issue they have had is getting their suppliers and supply network to be on the same page,thereby making sure that the work carried out by the suppliers is done on time.
Unfortunately for Boeing despite all their efforts to solve these issues for months now, the problems are certainly not going away. In June, Boeing found that tail parts on some Dreamliners hadn’t been properly fitted, a mistake which could take eight days per airplane to fix. As such a lot of of the 787 was outsourced, there might be other components embedded deep in the plane that might need to be checked too. Boeing simply cannot keep having issues like this appear every couple of months – the cost of production slow-downs and even pauses will cut into the programs profitability.
Ryanair has got itself in hot water when it ran adverts depicting Sir Stelios as Pinocchio and suggesting he was lying about Easyjet’s punctuality. The “Pinocchio” adverts over which Sir Stelios was taking legal action were published in the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian in January and February. In the ad they mentioned him as “Easyjet’s – Mr Late Again” and called on him to “stop hiding the truth” about Easyjet’s on-time performance. 
Mr O’Leary of Ryanair was forced to apologise, saying Sir Stelios was not personally accountable for Easyjet not publishing weekly information on their on-time performance. In response Sir Stelios dedicated the victory to everyone “who have suffered verbal abuse at the hands of O’Leary”. In a libel suit that was eventually settled out of court, with Sir Stelios accepting £50,100 in damages, which he will donate to his philanthropic foundation.
For some time now the rivalry between the two low-cost airliners has often been centred around advertising. In the past both carriers have referred one another to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over various ad campaigns. Only this Wednesday Ryanair was punished by the ASA for misleading customers with low fare offers, following a complaint from Easyjet.
Emirates have just ordered another 32 Airbus A380s which now makes it the second largest long haul carrier in the world. This latest order is worth US$11.5 billion and brings the total number of Emirates A380s to a staggering 90 aircraft, which is roughly 40% of all world order for the aircraft. This order brings the total number of orders for the Airbus A380 to 234 from 17 different customers.
Emirates’ existing fleet of ten A380s currently serves London Heathrow, Toronto, Paris, Jeddah, Bangkok, Seoul, Sydney and Auckland. Beijing and Manchester are soon to be added to the schedule and the New York route will also be re-opened.
The Unite union that represents BA cabin crew has successfully won its court appeal against the injunction stopping its proposed industrial action. In reaction to the news BA said it was “disappointed” that the ruling had been in favour of Unite. BA had originally been granted a last minute injunction on May 17, one day before a second round of strikes was due to begin.
As a result of the new ruling BA faces five days of industrial action which are likely to start next week. The Unite union has also put forward May 24-28, May 30-June 3 and June 5-9 as possible dates for further strike action. BA hopes to operate 60 per cent of its long haul flights and 50 per cent of its short haul flights. Unfortunately talks aimed at settling the dispute seem likely to fail especially considering BA’s recent comment that the “strikes have failed twice and they will fail again”. BA believe they “have put forward a very fair offer that addresses the concerns Unite has raised over the last 15 months. We believe cabin crew would accept it if it was put to them in a fair and secret ballot.”
If you are worried about BA strikes you might want to look into hiring a private jet
For the first time in almost a week flights have resumed after ash from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull resulted in the closure of UK airspace.
flights resume after ash fears subside
The ban was finally lifted by the Civil Aviation Authority on Tuesday evening following safety tests that showed plane engines had “increased tolerance levels in low ash density areas”. The decision to ban aircraft flights for so long has now resulted in a huge political row as to weather it was the right decision.
Private air charter brokers, like Smarter Air Charter, are now being called upon by stranded passengers because the return back to normality will be painfully slow. Six days after the shut down caused by volcanic ash tens of thousands of Britons are still stranded abroad. Travel experts say it will take weeks before things get back to normal.
Unfortunately airliners will continue to experience delays owing to planes being in the wrong place and the sheer backlog of people waiting to catch flights. Luckily smaller private jets are able to use local airports which means avoiding the backlogs and delays.
Following advice from the Met Office, the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) is continuing to enforce restrictions on UK controlled airspace due to the volcanic ash cloud that continues to remain over the British Isles. At present it is very difficult to predict when the major airports will reopen as the situation remains dynamic.
So could air charter be an option to avoid the volcanic ash cloud? Since the restriction began Smarter Air Charter have been inundated with inquiries from people trying to get home. Unfortunately the air traffic restrictions apply to all aircraft that fly above a certain altitude. However, there are other options available to you if you are stuck in the UK or abroad. Please contact us immediately to see if we can help.
For those unfortunate enough to be trapped in the UK or Europe there is some hope. Under European law airlines have to offer passengers either a full refund or offer them a transfer to another flight when it becomes available. If there are other costs such as hotels and car hire this should be covered by the passengers insurance company.
The only problem is that the volcanic eruption is a unique situation so standard conditions may be affected. Another problem is that these days many people book their own accommodation separate from their flights. This means that hotel accommodation may not be covered by their policy.
To try and solve the problem caused by the volcanic ash airliners and NATS are contacting aircraft manufacturers and some airliners are doing their own tests. British Airways and KLM have be carrying out test flights to see if the volcanic ash will damage the aircraft engines. If the aircraft pass the maintenance inspection airliners will be keen to maintain normal scheduled flights. However, there has been a lot of publicity over aircraft engine failure, should they through volcanic ash. People will therefore be nervous about getting on an aircraft that intends to chance its luck flying through volcanic ash.
Today many airports in the UK are being affected by a cloud of volcanic ash drifting from Iceland. So far Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports have been shut. Manchester are still running some flights but Birmingham has already closed. Heathrow and Gatwick have yet to be effected but Gatwick believe they will not need to close down. 
The volcanic eruption occurred several weeks ago but yesterday saw a particularly violent eruption that sent the cloud of ash over the UK. The cloud is projected to move further south during the day.
Ryan air is looking for an alternative mobile phone service provider following OnAir terminating their contract with the airline. The two companies have worked together since April 2008 during which time OnAir carried out its service on 50 Ryan air aircraft. Ryan air hoped to expand the service but unfortunately the two companies could not reach an agreement on the process and timing of the deployment.
Benoit Debains, CEO of OnAir, said “It’s disappointing that OnAir and Ryanair couldn’t reach agreement on the detail of a roll-out to their entire fleet, but our experience was extremely positive and we wish Ryanair every success in the future,”
OnAir is currently working with six other airlines and intends to launch its service with six more airlines over the coming year.