Cityjet

[Hangar6]

WX

Yes a great combination once you have pots of money to throw away, the problem is that very great combination is not sustainable for much longer..

I think WX are going to run out of money, I hope I am wrong but last five years have been brutal and lets face it AF KLM cant afford WX anymore and maybe with HOP dont even want to afford them

I dont want WX to go but making money is important and the current fleet mix and utilisation is an issue

Agree?

[Cyrano]

Originally Posted by No RYR for me

@hangar 6

And

Quote:
Many failed attempts at getting good utilization on each hull per day, good yield for business traffic but loads aircraft sit around all day 10am-4pm

Is actually a good combination. You rather have low capital high maintenance cost aircraft sit around most of the day instead of new high capital cost low maintenance cost aircraft.....

You are right, and indeed VLM and Eastern employed this strategy successfully in the past: fly only at peak times, because with low capital costs you don't have to "sweat the assets" so much. The problem comes when the peak-time flying doesn't generate enough revenue, and you have to try to find something to do off-peak that will make a contribution to fixed costs. That's the situation in which CityJet has found itself.

Originally Posted by fjencl

Are we expecting an imminent announcement soon......??????

Tautology of the week award - when else other than "soon" would one expect an imminent announcement?

I am not suggesting that anything is "imminent" - I don't know when this process will be concluded - although I seem to recall press reports suggesting that it was expected to be complete during 1Q2013.

[Omnipresent]

Suspect this is leaked to flush out any more bidders:

Air France Said to Narrow CityJet Bidders to Two by Next Month - Bloomberg

[davidjohnson6]

AF-KL group released their annual results for 2012 yesterday. Had a look through the blurb, but the only kind of breakdown by business was passenger / cargo / Transavia / catering - the only mention of Cityjet seemed tobe the number of aircraft currently in the fleet.

Does anyone have financial figures for Cityjet or some measure of results for calendar year 2012 ? I suspect they won't be pretty, but would be interesting to get an accurate idea of the current state of Cityjet without just relying on the rumour mill.

Separately, AF state a decision will be made on Cityjet's future no later than July
Air France-KLM nears decision on CityJet | ATWOnline

Interesting comments by an AF EVP:

...CityJet’s strategic position in the group is “not so obvious” following the merger of Air France’s French regional activities under the HOP! brand. This prompted Air France-KLM to test the market for would-be strategic investors. “Two to three remain interested,” ... contenders include both strategic investors and other airlines.

...the main issue is to give a future to this company [CityJet]. I think that with investors it will have more opportunities to develop than within the group

[Papa2Charlie]

How is business generally at WX these days?

I realise the airline had accumulated significant losses but was wondering if they have made any progress in recent times with improving the performance of the business.

[Nauti]

Evening all,

I'd be very interested to hear from any pilots with experience of working for CityJet - either through the cadet scheme or otherwise. Would be very grateful for a quick pm if you find yourself with the time!

Thanks,

Nauti

[davidjohnson6]

Irish Times reports that ASL Aviation and Intro Aviation are the 2 remaining bidders for Cityjet

[insuindi]

I'd expect this to be only a preliminary picture, given the pending sale of Cityjet, but for now the Germany routes are planned to be continued, albeit at a reduced frequency - Winter 2013/14: LCY-DRS/FMO/PAD all planned 4/7

[bad bear]

The CAA figures show a 13% drop in passengers on the Rotterdam to london City route and similar fugure on the Dundee to London City. This represents a fairly big decline in passenger numbers but I guess yeild is the main thing. With Dundee only having this one route which seems to be continuously declining, does anyone know how big the projected losses for the Dundee airport are expected to be this year?
bb

[j636]

A German buyer to buy cityjet

[CCR]

CityJet to be sold to German group Intro - RTÉ News

[dublinaviator]

Air France Said to Prefer Intro Aviation as CityJet Buyer - Bloomberg

At least it's being sold to a company with a proven track record in turning around loss-making airlines, so hopefully they'll be able to grow the company and add jobs.

[virginblue]

Hans-Rudolf Wöhrl, the guy behind Intro (and founder of NFD in the 1970s - later merged with RFG to become Eurowings and Germanwings and later sold to Lufthansa) is an interesting chap. Only very recently he quit pilots.de, a (much smaller) German version of PPRUNE where he every once in a while openly engaged in discussions with members (mostly pilots who prefered to remain anonymous in contrast to him) - despite getting a lot of flak for his work at NFD, dba, LTU, FlyNext and Intersky from pilots who sufferend from his restructuring work.

As you guys will know, his latest investment is Intersky, the small Austrian regional airline operating with Q300 and ATR72-600s. Although this project is mainly run by his partner Peter Oncken. Ever since his NFD days, Wöhrl is close to ATR, by the way....

[Skipness One Echo]

This might explain why the focus suddenly switched to Germany with new routes to Dresden, Munster, Nurember and Paderborn. Seems to have been in the pipeline for a while methinks.

[davidjohnson6]

I'm sure that Cityjet could be made a bit more Germany focussed, but assuming it remains heavily centred around London City, how much scope is there to make Ciyjet a lot more German focussed ?

Assuming Intro complete on the proposed purchase, would it be fair to expect that routes to places like Pau, Brest, Brive and Deauville might be de-emphasised ?

[virginblue]

INTRO is an investment company. They usually do not re-invent an airline they purchase, but rather streamline it. INTRO was also interested in Adria Airways recently, bout of course they were never interested in turning it into a German airline.

[davidjohnson6]

I understand that the F50s operated by Cityjet are rather older than the company might wish to boast about too loudly. How much longer can these aircraft likely carry on without having too much of an impact on flight reliability and punctuality / maintenance needs ?

Yes, I know Delta / Northwest managed to fly DC9s for decades, but old aircraft tend to be less fuel efficient and like any piece of machinery, maintenance becomes more expensive and time consuming as the machinery ages, which implies aircraft spend more time on the ground and not earning revenue in the air. Sure, this increased fuel+maintenance cost might be cheaper than interest payment for a new-but-very-expensive-to-buy aircraft, but there must be some point where replacement with something slightly less old is worthwhile.

Furthermore, what kind of capacity does Intro have to raise funds either in its own right or in Cityjet's name to replace the F50s with something that is perhaps just 10 years old instead ?

[lalbak]

Mind you, these F50's have a low fuel consumption and due to the fact that VLM has all the maintenance expertise and parts in-house they are cheap to maintain and operate. Safety is not so much the question here but rather how far are they willing to wear the aircraft down. The interiors for example are all right at the moment but they are getting old and could use an upgrade.

The RJ's are better looking jets but a lot more expensive to operate

[Skipness One Echo]

Remember that the whole idea was to replace a 50 seat turboprop with a jet, then of course the price of fuel went up. It's rather pricey new ATRs or a jet then.

[saucy jack]

These are evidently smart gentlemen with an enviable record of success in an industry where records of abject failure are more often the norm.

They have very historic ties to ATR and because of this the planes which they procured for Intersky were by all accounts very attractively priced.

I doubt they would look at Cityjet without having something up their sleeves.

A London City-Franco-German regional (Flybe) style operator might be an attractive proposition...and potential launch customer for the ATR92 anyone?

There are surely cross border regional routes to be exploited between these countries without passengers being subjected to the almost obligatory misery of changeing Air France planes in Paris.

I await developments with interest!

SJ