End of Year wash up Airlines & Routes

[Facelookbovvered]

Well with most airlines and Airports having reported -% drops in traffic in 2010 whats peoples thoughts on how 2011 will pan out?

The Volcano and early start to Winter in Europe haven't helped, but the underlying trend is of concern and the industry need to take a long hard look at why pax's are avoiding airports in their droves, sure the economy is a factor but for the crews amongst us we have become almost immune to the daily grind of having our bags searched and our bits felt.

Security is to a large extent outwith the control of Airlines and Airports, however everything else is and a long hard look in mirror is required

Lets start with Airports and what they got wrong

Replacing Kiss & Fly with a £1 or £2 drop of fee's and if you have no cash (common in today's cashless society) charging a card fee!!

Creating a fast track (chargeable) to speed you through security, well in theory by removing the normal security staff to create the queue in the first place.

Why have they done this? well this can be laid at the door of the LoCo airlines that have driven handling charges down to lower fares and the airport companies must get the cash from somewhere!!

Which leads nicely to the Airlines (and ATC employee's)

This years strikes and work to rules in Spain & France have caused huge delays and more than a few cancellations and ruined many a family's holidays, if you were lucky enough to be flying with an IT operator or Legacy airline then you were probably looked after, if however you were a guest of Ryanair, easyjet, bmibaby, Jet2 and the like then in varying degree's you were left in the dark and hung out to dry and are probably still awaiting a reply to your e-mails never mind a refund or compensation for your costs.

Then there is the game of will it wont it fly? not the aircraft of course but the flight you've booked on and around in terms of Hotels and hire cars only to find the dates or times have changed or the route canx altogether Jet2 & bmibaby seem worse than most.

This leads in to airlines extras all Loco's fall into this one, with luggage allowances from 15Kg 22kg and £10 -15kg for every kilo over, Jet2 win the sliver spoon on this with Ryanair picking up the wooden one!! bmibaby managed to get lots of free air time on the BBC watchdog for dodgy gate gauges and other issues.

My golden globe must go to Easyjet for its new £99.99 all in ticket including luggage, boarding and all fee's and charges which includes change of date up to (i think?) a week before and 3 weeks after booked date. If this is as easy to book as it looks on the website info then it will get my vote and money everyday, who in their right mind wants to spend 25 minutes going through a booking process that is trying to mug you at every turn. We all know its not going to £2.99 or £9.99 so how about some honesty at last.

[Expressflight]

With at least two smallish European start-ups in the offing for 2011 I think this may be the year when a serious effort is made to develop point to point services in parts of Europe on thinner, niche routes.

Travellers have had just about enough of being charged for everything that the bigger airports can think of and the pure hassle of using those airports, and the time one has to allow to transit them, is starting to have an effect. This aspect is where these new carriers might be on to something by using smaller, local airports catering largely for their core catchments - both in terms of business and leisure travellers. Indeed, Flybe's plans for their E175s seem to be something along these lines, with their talk of developing routes between secondary European cities.

Let's just hope that all the problems experienced by Europe's airlines in 2010, both natural and otherwise, are not repeated in 2011.

[LGS6753]

2011 will be about economics.
In the UK we have had the VAT increase; direct taxes increase in April, together with road fuel, and lots of public sector workers will lose their jobs. This will have an effect on people's disposable income, and is likely to prevent much in the way of route expansion.
Ireland is bust, and austerity measures will hit home this year. There will be an election, which will result in political uncertainty. PSO routes will largely disappear.
Portugal and Spain are locked-in to the euro, and because of that will also suffer this year; worse in Spain because they have lots of marginally insolvent local banks. Industrial action by the unemployed may put visitors off, especially if demonstrations get violent.
Germany is doing well, and its population will travel to the sun with their towels in greater numbers.
Belgium is facing economic and political problems, and may even break up.
Greece, like Ireland, is bust and already facing austerity, meaning lower pay and higher unemployment.

Prognosis for aviation: unless German, go away and hide. 2012 looks better.

Hope for the year: split of the euro into a teutonic 'deutsche-euro' := and a tatty 'lire-escudo-punt-peseta-drachma-euro'.:eek: