Clickair

[Mach trim]

What is like working for Clickair ?

Are the guys who left Vueling for Clickair ? Is it better ?

Who do you think will survive in the next few years Clickair or Vueling ?

:confused:

[ICING AOA]

Who do you think will survive in the next few years Clickair or Vueling ?


easyJet and Ryanair only :E

[toro01]

Icing AOA no idea what you talk about mate(as always no surprise). Do some research on the web and answer yourself

[Yeles]

Hi Mach

In my opinion it will be better click than vueling. The last one seems to be going upside down and inside out whereas Click is growing very fast and had benefits during the first six months of this year. If you ask for salaries and conditions I think they don't differ too much but as far as vueling is loosing too much pilots they are pushing their crews to fly during their off days.

Clickair is respecting more the rosters. That is the only thing I can tell you for sure. If you have any doubt send me message

[Mach trim]

Yeah,thanks

Vueling is having to cancel flights for lack of pilots

Vueling has new planes , good maintenance.

Given past history of low cost (Iberia ) start ups

I am wondering who will be around in a few years and weather the next storm.

[jetpilotataltitude]

I used to work for Vueling, so I can speak from a view point of knowing what really goes on! I was never paid correctly from day one. I never received all the add on´s which were supposed to have been attached to my contract! :=

It´s not just a few pilots leaving: for example in May:15 Captains left, in June: 20 Captains left, in July 10 Captains left. The number of First Officers leaving is a little less clear but it is several per month.

The reason why pilots leave an airline are several and not one answer can apply to all, but in Vueling it is clear that management hold their pilots in very little regard, in fact in so little regard as to not reply to emails whether they are positive or negative. You are promissed many things at interview and subsequently during courses, but little or none of these promisses materialise. Why?.........they make these promises to try and keep you just long enough to train the replacement pilot who will be needed when after several months you realise to your cost from both a finacial point of view and social one, that you have just had enough of the lies and deceit! 87% PILOT TURNOVER IN 24 MONTHS, AND THE DGAC IN SPAIN ARE NOT TOO HAPPY ABOUT THIS!

There are very few happy pilots in Vueling, so I am unsure why an ex-colleague of mine claims otherwise in previous positings, that is not to say that on a daily basis crews don´t work well and or enjoy their jobs because they do. But in the end no matter how much you love flying you need to live and to believe that you contribution is at least appreciated! This does not happen in Vuleing and the stock market knows this, and this is why shares once valued at 41 euros are now being traded at just above an all time low of 23.20 euros, and all in six months!:yuk:

Too little, too late is what most crews think of the latest offer to subdue the masses, and keep pilots and cabin crew happy. If this offer had been made back in January then may be Vueling would be giving Clickair a run for its money? Who knows for sure how and why a company allows situations such as this to develop? And know to a point where the company cannot crew its planes and has to hire in other companies to do their flights with four or five planes on the ground!

And finally, to use the excuse that Vueling is losing money because its spending it all on advertising is rubbish, its losing money because its planes are not full, its planes are on the ground, flights are regularly being cancelled and they are giving away so many seats (see link) which makes most bums on seats non-revenue earning. In past four months the average bums on seats has been 100, therefore the 80 premium priced seats never got sold so all flights were and are making a huge loss, http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?emailimage=0c2a54137bb34924405dd468143c8505> !:*

[fiftypercentn1]

hola, porfavor me podeis decir cuanto gana un copiloto n clickair (al mes)
gracias

[manuelvi]

check out those 2 websites guys

http://www.pilotosdeiberia.com/

www.extracrew.com (http://www.extracrew.com)

Better to know some Spanish but if you want to join them tha's the minimum.

cheers

ps:Moderators sorry if i'm publishing the adrresses of 2 similar forums, it's not advertisement just for more detailed infos.

tks.

[Mach trim]

What's the load factor at Clickair ?


I wonder if they are losing money or not ?


Whoever buys Iberia might sell their share in Clickair ?

[Liftdumper]

Loadfactors are quite ok in Click, but with their ticketprices they are committing suicide.

[EjetSetter]

Taking Spanish, what's the roster pattern like at Click?

Good for a commuter from say Dublin or London?

Staff Travel?

Type Raiting paid for with bond?

Minimal Hours?

[DVD]

"Taking Spanish, what's the roster pattern like at Click?"

Depends on the base, but usually you can expect 5on/4off, but there isn´t
anything fix, change everymonth. Usually 13 flight days a months plus 2
stanbys.......

"Good for a commuter from say Dublin or London?"

I would say,no problem. There are a lot of portugueses that live in lisboa
and are base in BCN or SVQ.

"Staff Travel?"

Yes, with company tickets or extracrew (jumpseat all you want):cool:

"Type Raiting paid for with bond?"

No bond, you pay for your Type.:ugh:

Minimal Hours?

I couldn´t tell you.............


DVD

[keltic]

Clickair only reason is to take Vueling out of the market. Old stuff, GO, TED by United, Metrojet...and so on. Vueling traffic figures are good, but it´s in an constant power struggle between it´s shareholders which dangers the results.

Clickair is not growing lately and rumours says that Iberia is thinking of integrating it again.

Only Ryanair and Easyjet will survive.

[Strobe lights]

Hola. Alguien sabe los requisitos de Clickair para copilotos?
Les he puesto un mensaje pero no responden.

Edad máxima?
Horas de vuelo?
Etc..

Gracias

[yakmadrid]

Looks like click air will buy or merge with vueling in a not so distant future. Right now Click air is benefiting form the sinergies of being part owned by Iberia, fuel price, (IB has done a good job with fuel insurance), Airbus discount, access to IB airbus positions for rapid expansion, Ib passengers, maintenance, etc. Vueling is heavy on the red and changing over to attract business passengers (??). Good luck.

[Shanwickman]

Are Clickair dropping some routes? Dublin is not bookable after January 31st.
Checked also on Iberia and only routing shown is via Mad.

[Riu]

For what i know clickair has stopped the arrival of the last 6 planes.. plus yes, they will be dropping some routes to open new ones.

hasta pronto

[GatoVolador]

As you already said, Clickair is dropping some routes:


Geneva: because Clickair is performing very bad in Switzerland. Remember the fiasco of Basel-Euroairport (transferred from Air Nostrum), that was sold but never flown; the reduction of one frequency in Zurich, etc. It seems that the low-cost market from this country to BCN is already taken by Easyjet, and Clickair didn't succeed. Their aircrafts are too large against the ones of Easyjet, and furthermore, Clickair is not a well-known brand among the Swiss people.
Lyon: This was as the route to Marseille or the trial of Vueling out of Nice. All these routes are business oriented and not very sensitive to prices. Frequencies are more important than price, and Clickair was unable to satisfy the needs of the passengers of this route. Load factors were low because the schedules were bad (first of all the flight used to depart BCN at 5:40 am!, and then before a pause, they resumed it at 16:30 :=), there was only one daily frequency, and the low-cost service was not what passengers needed. This route should be taken by Air Nostrum, but I guess it won't.
Dublin: Iberia had a lot of connecting passengers in the DUB-BCN route that now are not gathered anymore. Again, 180 seats are too much, particularly considering that Aer Lingus is already offering both a premium product (connections out of DUB) and low cost prices as well. However, and this is only a personal feeling, I guess DUB will come back in the summer season, when flights departed almost fully booked. To me, DUB fits well in the network of Clickair, but remember that XG is assuming some heavy routes (BCN-PMI with 6 flights, BCN-BIO with 5, BCN-ALC with 3, BCN-OVD and BCN-BRU with 2, also they resumed the BCN-Dubrovnik and started BCN-Sofia, the BIO-LHR and the SVQ-Canaries flights, they are increasing the BCN-Canaries flights up to two daily frequencies, etc. etc.). In other words, the fleet is limited (morning slots too, and they are needed to the Balearic Islands and to BIO!), and they need capacity to serve all these routes from IB. As we are now in the low-season to DUB, XG decided to pull DUB out of the network. That's why I guess they ended DUB. It wouldn't be stange to see XG again in DUB from may/june, maybe as a seasonal flight (as Tangier, Nador, Malta, or Moscow), or even as a all-year round flight.

[GatoVolador]

Riu: could you please elaborate your statement a bit more. What's your source regarding the statement of the six A320? As far as I know (and I miight be wrong!) Clickair ended up with 24 aircrafts (what it was forecasted in their 2006-2009 business plan) and it will keep growing (1 new plane per month) as scheduled.

On top of that, Alex Cruz suggested that XG could enter the MAD market. To me, this would be a wrong step (it would only make sense to offer some new destinations oriented to low-cost, non-IB, and point-to-point travellers, such as overnight inmigrants-oriented flights to Nador, for instance) and I'm not very sure if Mr Cruz is sincere or just "kidding" with the journalists (it's quite common, remember the classical interview "Q: Is Clickair considering Salamanca as a possible destination?" A: "In Clickair, we study all the possibilities", and it's clear that they just said this to keep the local journalist happy, but of course they are not planning such a flight!).

If XG entered MAD, they would need much more than 6 aircrafts. And even if not, BCN can still grow, and more particularly, airports such as AGP, BIO, PMI, ALC, could hold more point-to-point flights under a low-cost cost structure.

[Mach trim]

Personally I think a merger with Vueling is inevitable and the only way to survive against competition from Easyjet and company.

What is it 25% of the same routes. Vueling and Easyjeton the same flight iroute at the same time with 62 pax each for example.

With both Vueling and Clickair losing money if they do not merge they will lose money.

I am sure they are talking now it is just a question of control and % share of the new company and getting a mutually beneficial deal done.

With Clickairs slots and Vueling's brand,new airplanes and maintenance.

Whatever you say about Vueling the customer satisfaction is pretty good.

How about "Click the Vueling" as a phrase ?

[fiftypercentn1]

last time i saw companies buying eachother to survive (volare-aireurope, airmalta-azzurra, swiss-sabena) it wasnt that much of a good move uh? im afraid merging is not the solution..

[GatoVolador]

To me, a Vueling-Clickair merger is not very likely to happen. Only if another low-cost is interested in Vueling (let's say, EasyJet), then Clickair would buy it. Otherwise, they will just loose money until one of them dies (probably Vueling because of the weaker shareholders) and the other will just take the passengers of the other one. This option is better because it's cheaper.

Why XG would be interested in Vueling? If they bought Vueling, they would need to:

pay for each share of Vueling (or modifying their shareholders' current equilibrium because of the integration of Vueling's investors in Clickair's capital), and Clickair doesn't want this.
assume the past losses & obligations of Vueling, and why Clickair is going to be interested in them?
bear some assets that are not interesting at all: the base at CDG, for instance.
reduce their operations, because the Vueling+Clickair supply exceeds the demand. If many workers have to be fired and some leasing contracts have to be cancelled, then this is a cost to Clickair.In my opinion, Clickair wants:

Competition against Vueling (even if they loose money) to make the third-generation airline run out of cash and shut down.
Once Vueling is out of the business, assumption of passengers booked with Vueling and the future low-cost demand, in principle with their own fleet (increasing load factors, since Clickair's aircrafts are still far of being fully booked).
(Moderate) increase of the price of each ticket, because of the less excess of supply. (Currently the prices are low because of the excess of it, but if Vueling disappears, they will converge to higher prices). The increases would be moderate because there are other competitors (Spanair) and also new players that could grow in BCN if Vueling exits the market and Clickair raises the prices (i.e.: EasyJet building a domestic network out of BCN, with routes to SVQ, TFN, PMI, ALC, MAD, ..., which is not impossible due to the excess of demand).
Continuation of their own fleet plan without taking into account Vueling's abandoned A320s nor slots. Clickair will have in december 2009 a fleet of 50 A320 and a bunch of slots from Iberia. They are already secured, so they don't need the former A320 of Vueling. Plus, the market has a lot of second-handed available A320s to be leased so if Clickair wanted the fleet to increase, they don't need Vueling. It's true, however, that some routes could increase their frequencies if Clickair assumed the demand of Vueling, and in this case, Clickair would maybe lease some extra A320 and would hire the crews. These A320 and their crews could be from Vueling or from elsewhere. For them, is better not to assume the fleet nor the employees of Vueling. In the case of the A320, they could lease ex-novo any former Vueling A320 without bearing the costs of, let's say, unpaid lessors invoices nor the cancellation fees of any contract. The same goes to the employees: if the employees are fired and then hired back by Clickair, they loose their seniority, and then, they are less expensive. Plus, Clickair can skip some employees that might not fit in their "employee profile".The Clickair-Vueling issue is like what happened to Air Madrid. Air Comet could have bought Air Madrid, but they didn't do that because it was less expensive taking Air Madrid's space in the market just just by letting Air Madrid die. They could:

(1) assume the passengers (people from Latin America willing to fly at low cost with low service) by offering a similar product and fares.

(2) take the fleet by contacting the lessor and showing the interest for an aircraft (without bearing the previous costs, and contracting again not the entire fleet but just each plane one by one, which allows you to abandon the planes you are not interested in).

(3) take almost any slot.

[fiftypercentn1]

your point is good. but.
taking into account easyjet and ryanair rate of expansion, how long (in years) do you think click can survive? even if vueling (i hope not!!) goes bust?

guys im afraid that, after seeing whats happening with alitalia-airfrance(and iberia being bought as well), the future of aviation in europe is 1 or 2 BIG flag carriers merge and a couple of low cost. im talking long term..7 to 10 years, but still.

feliz ano a todos

[GatoVolador]

your point is good. but.
taking into account easyjet and ryanair rate of expansion, how long (in years) do you think click can survive? even if vueling (i hope not!!) goes bust?

Why do you think Clickair will not be able to survive? I think it was created to become profitable, and I'm sure they will.

The big deal with EasyJet and Ryanair is that they are the only true european carriers, since they cover almost every country in Europe, with crews based everywhere, with well-know international brands (Vueling is linked to Spain, MyAir to Italy, Transavia to the Netherlands-France, but Ryanair is somehow "European"), and with a very particular cost structure. Their European size allows them to get very low costs because of their bargaining power with providers. Ryanair is THAT important to Boeing, to some local airports (i.e.: Charleroi), to fuel suppliers, etc., that they get extra-large discounts in the purchases. And costs behave as a barrier of entry. There are local low-costs, but nobody is as big as any of the two, and nobody can grow to become as big because nobody is as large as to make the costs go as low as in Ryanair. (Somehow, it's a kind of circle: I benefit of low costs because of the size, and the size allows me to lower my costs.)

Having said this, and assuming that nobody will be able to be as Ryanair (Easyjet is different), I can't see the link between the profitability of Ryanair and the profitability of Clickair. To me, both carriers are quite different. Ryanair is a bus at a 900km/h speed: nothing to do with flag or even low cost carriers. They are completely unique. Easyjet is a serious competitor, but much less important, since they have a "light" low-cost approach. Clickair shoud be compared more with Vueling, Easyjet, MyAir, SkyEurope, etc., even with second-generation airlines (Spanair) than with Ryanair.

It's true that Ryanair is dramatically growing, but they don't overlap as much as it seems with Clickair. Recall that yields are so much poor in Spain that even Easyjet nor Ryanair entered in a serious way in the domestic market. They have been adding new european unpublished ever routes (let's say... Girona - Leipzig, or Murcia-East Midlands) but very few domestic routes. There are a few: Santander-Madrid (where Air Nostrum had a monopoly and prices were very high), Girona-Fuerteventura (the Canaries is a heavy destination, and on top of that nobody served Fuerteventura from BCN or GRO), or Girona-Madrid (to people that usually made the route by bus). The impact in Iberia, Spanair, Vueling, etc. is very low.

EasyJet is much close to all of them, and prices are similar to the ones of Clickair. Again, even lower impact. From BCN, EasyJet wasn't able to open domestic routes; and from MAD, just a skinny network: La Coruña, Asturias, and Lanzarote. Also some unstable routes to the Balearic Islands. And load factors don't seem very high. The Spanish carriers are already offering low-prices tickets with higher quality (FFP, no credit cards / baggage surcharge, connecting flights, more frequencies...).
Recall that EasyJet gave up the opportunity to open a base at BCN due to the strong competition, high excess of demand, and low yields of BCN airport. (Vueling also stopped growing out of BCN and moved to MAD and CDG).

To sum up, it seems that EasyJet & Ryanair will still have large growth rates in Spain, but mainly focusing (with concrete exceptions) in the Spain-Europe market, particularly in the routes never flown before.

In the league in which Clickair and Vueling operate (BCN-SVQ market; BCN-FCO; VLC-ORY/CDG...) there is enough demand and profitability is possible. The only matter is that currently there are several routes covered by two high-density aircrafts (180 seats) airlines that could be covered by regional aircrafts or by just one low cost. Think of SVQ-VLC, or even the crazy BCN-LIS case (I don't think there is enough market for 2+2 overlaping daily high density A320, plus TAP and Portugalia. Just two frequencies would be better.)

To me, as long as any of the two disappear, the frequencies of the looser will be cancelled, and the other one will be profitable. Prices will not be like 700€/ticket, but they should be 70-120€ for a return domestic/european flight. At these prices, new players shouldn't be interested to enter the routes, but the airline could be profitable.

Clickair should be called "high-margins" rather than "low-cost", because the aim was to provide IB some capacity at (internal) low-cost rather than a new airline with external low-fares. They do basically the same (even with similar fares), but the costs of Clickair are lower, leading to higher margins to Iberia. That's why I wouldn't discard the option that in the future Clickair remained as a legal structure with low-costs in the employees side, capable to maintain low-prices with profitability, but operating under the brand "Iberia", as Audeli or Air Nostrum do. Just see how low the salaries in Audeli or Air Nostrum are, and they operate "as Iberia", and they are able to compete.

Even if XG looses money right now, it looses less money than with IB domestic out of BCN, and it allows IB to:

- Loose less money than before out of BCN.
- End up with the dual (MAD/BCN) hub system by converting BCN into a point-to-point station.
- Redirect assets (Airbuses) to the new "long-haul airline" project with epicentre in Madrid.
- Incorporate low-salaries employees and spread low-salaries across the short haul (the pilots are already accepting low-cost conditions in the short haul for the new employees, and FAs will do it as well).
- Gain market share: see good performance in BCN, SVQ, and even see that even IB+XG+Air Nostrum recuperated the first position in a very LCC airport such as Málaga.
- Block the entrance of new players (see how EasyJet decided not to open a base in BCN, and how they moved to MAD, where IB's demand is inelastic due to the presence of the hub)
- Allow IB to switch some A320 into A319 at no cost as a reaction to the high speed train: the A320 were given to XG, and IB could start new operating leases contracts without having to bear cancellation costs.
- Increase the capacity to destinations than before were not profitable due to the salaries of the crews (see Dubrovnik routes, Malta, Nador, Tangier, Munich, EDI...). Recall that BCN will pass from 30 A320 based in BCN to 50!
- Arrange the profits & losses account of IB: in the past, BCN loosed so much money all the year round that it had to be covered by profits made in the long-haul. This was even not enough in the 1st quarter, in which IB always showed a negative result. Now IB tranferred the losses to XG, and the P&L account shows positive operating results in any single period.

==> ==> Conclusion: Clickair might be loosing money, but less than IB, which is already better off. They know that the losses are temporary, just as long as Vueling dies and the demand adjusts. At this point, XG will start making profits regardless Ryanair & EasyJet, basically because these two LCC don't overlap their routes, but rather open new destinations. Just in particular cases the routes are the same, but even in this case, competition is not as brutal. A Madrid-Asturias flight with EasyJet's less expensive fare (because Easy also charges "nice" amounts when the demand is high!) is as low as with Iberia's or Spanair's lower prices.

Despite of everything, I bet Clickair will have profits, as EasyJet have, or as Air Berlin (with a structure which is close to a full service airline: free beverages, 60 minutes stops in each airport, crews based in hotels...) have. The key factor will be the rationalization of the supply. As long as the frequencies stop boomming, the surviving LCC airline will make profits.

guys im afraid that, after seeing whats happening with alitalia-airfrance(and iberia being bought as well), the future of aviation in europe is 1 or 2 BIG flag carriers merge and a couple of low cost. im talking long term..7 to 10 years, but still.

This is what is going to happen. Big airlines are that big that receive such important discounts from suppliers than smaller carriers will not be able to survive. (It's the same game than in the case of the small family owned shop and Carrefour: Carrefour takes almost all the cake and the small shops just serve some very specific niches of demand)

[4567]

Is Clickair launching any new flights to the UK ? Supposidly they were going to launch new flights to Scotland !

[GatoVolador]

To Riu: You were right. Clickair will add in 2008 only one aircraft (they forecasted 6).

[GatoVolador]

To 4567: ummm... with only one extra aircraft, I don't see it, but who knows! :\

[Riu]

To Riu: You were right. Clickair will add in 2008 only one aircraft (they forecasted 6).

And maybe you can see that aircraft parked in barcelona with no company colors.. with a 160 seats configuration that cost too much to change..
If i am not wrong i saw that plane there more than a month ago. Sometimes they move it to another parking. Calculating how much the company spent to get it there from the other part of the world, leasing and parking... the company should put it in the air as soon as possible.
But you can always see it there.

ideas?

[almost legal]

I am trying to book Gatwick to Seville in May . Does anyone know when that route will be open for bookings?

[GatoVolador]

It should appear soon, but Clickair tends to start the sale of the new seasons (from April) very late.

I guess it will appear by February.

[orangedriver]

Merging with Vueling?

[PenTito]

fiftypercentn1,
maybe we should instruct Meridiana to not merge with Eurofly, then....

[keltic]

I know who will lose: consumers. Less competences, prices up. And some niches going up again to 300 euros fares, as we had in Galicia before other operators came in.

With cancelations on the way (Coruña-Madrid with Easyjet, Santiago-Madrid with Vueling, and serious reductions with Vigo-Madrid Air Europa) I am affraid they are smelling something like Ryanair getting in more serious way in the domestic.

I am sure Clickair needs to be profitable as well. Iberia only controls a porcentage, and I am sure the other shareholders are putting pressure on the Alex Cruz neck. I don´t applaud the merge indeed, for regions, which depend on one single airline, global markets, boost Barcelona or Madrid, doesn´t care us at all.

We rather prefer subsdies (Ryanair in Santiago; Spanair, Easyjet, Portugalia and Clickair in Coruña; and Air France, Air Europa in Vigo), than hubs, hubs, hubs, and global business.

[almost legal]

Couldn't wait any longer for Clickair to release Gatwick to Seville in May so we are going elsewhere. ( didn't like the Ryanair timings ). Clickair call center kept saying flights available to book soon...........So lost sales for Clickair and the hotel/restaurants in Seville.

[pes319]

Nivel 1 ( + de 2300TT)

Fijo bruto mensual: 2500
Variable 60-75H: 15€hora
Variable +75h: 25€ hora
Dieta Nacional: 45€
Dieta Internacional: 80€
Imaginaria: 20€

Nivel 2 ( - de 2300TT)

Fijo: 1250
lo demas igual

Saludos