EGYPTAIR News 18 MAY 2023

سيمخلا 18/5/2023

Recent data shows return of confidence in air travel

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has reported general high levels of confidence in air travel for the upcoming peak Northern summer holiday season. This corresponds with first quarter 2023 forward bookings data for travel in May–September 2023, which is tracking at 35% above 2022 levels.

IATA survey data

An IATA survey covered 4,700 travelers in 11 countries, and shows the level of healthy demand. Perhaps more important is the general sentiment of confidence in the air travel, after the chaotic post pandemic issues which were experienced by both airlines and airports.

From the survey data:

79% of travellers surveyed were planning a trip in the June-August 2023 period. 80% of travellers surveyed are expecting smooth travel with post pandemic issues having been resolved.

The assessment of forward bookings also shows a positive growth across all the key global travel regions:

Asia Pacific region (134.7%)

Middle East (42.9%)

Europe (39.9%)

Africa (36.4%)

Latin America (21.4%)

North America (14.1%)

The 2023 Northern summer season is perhaps something of a litmus test for the industry, following a somewhat chaotic return to operations after the three year pandemic hiatus. IATA’s Nick Careen highlighted the fact that, for many travellers, this season would be their first return to air travel after the pandemic era.

“Expectations are high for this year’s peak Northern summer travel season. For many this will be their first post-pandemic travel experience,” said Nick Careen, IATA’s Senior Vice President for Operations, Safety and Security.

“Although some disruptions can be expected, there is a clear expectation that the ramping-up issues faced at some key hub airports in 2022 will have been resolved.”

“To meet strong demand, airlines are planning schedules based on the capacity that airports, border control, ground handlers, and air navigation service providers have declared.”

Over the next months, all industry players now need to deliver,” he warned. Are airlines and airports prepared?

Collaboration, sufficient staffing and accurate information sharing are all essential to minimize operational disruptions and their impact on passengers.

The key is ensuring that the declared capacities and schedules are available.

“A lot of work has gone into preparing for the peak Northern summer travel season. Success rests on readiness across all players in the supply chain.”

“If each player delivers on what has been declared, there should be no last-minute requirements to reduce the scale of the schedules that travelers have booked on,” said Careen.

A watchful eye on Europe

Labor unrest, particularly in France, is a cause for concern. Eurocontrol data on the impact of French strikes earlier this year shows that cancellations can spike by over a third.

“We need to keep a very careful eye on Europe where strike actions have caused significant disruptions earlier this year.”

“Governments should have effective contingency plans in place so that the actions of those providing essential services like air traffic control maintain minimum service levels and do not disrupt the hard-earned vacations of those traveling or put at risk the livelihoods of those in the travel and tourism sectors,” said Careen.

ISAGO: 15 years of advancing aviation safety

SAGO is an industry program for the global oversight of ground handling service providers (GHSPs). It is based on the IATA's Ground Operations Manual (IGOM) standards. Since its launch in May 2008, over 3,000 audits have been conducted worldwide, making it the industry global standard for GHSPs.

“Over the past 15 years, ISAGO has matured and evolved to become a center of excellence for safety auditing in ground handling. With 195 organizations onboard it is now the driving force in improving ramp safety, reducing ground damage, and enabling standardized and sustainable operations. It also plays a role in mitigating the billions of dollars of damage to aircraft and equipment that happens each year and helps airlines to allocate resources efficiently. More and more governments and airports now recognize ISAGO as part of their safety oversight programs,” said Monika Mejstrikova, IATA’s Director of Ground Operations.

Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (Hactl) and dnata Dubai were the world’s first ISAGO-accredited GHSPs and have maintained their ISAGO registration for 15 years. Both companies acknowledge the positive impact of ISAGO in their operations.

"ISAGO plays a vital role in enhancing aviation safety levels—in particular, by standardizing many different safety standards and recommended practices and minimizing the potential risks in ground handling around the world. It is an invaluable resource and significant safety driver for all parties," said Wilson Kwong, Hactl’s Chief Executive.

The ISAGO Registry now includes 195 GHSPs that provide services at 324 accredited stations in 206 airports around the world. Over 100 ISAGO airline members have instant access to the ISAGO Registry, where they can access nearly 500 different ISAGO audit reports and drive more efficient oversight of outsourced ground handling services including risk, cost, and audit reduction.

"ISAGO has been an integral part of our journey towards continuous improvement, and we are proud to have achieved this significant milestone. The positive impact that ISAGO has brought to our operations cannot be overstated, and we remain fully committed to upholding its rigorous standards," said Jaffar Dawood, dnata Senior Vice President Airport Operations UAE, Middle East, and Africa.

Future Proofing ISAGO

ISAGO is constantly evolving to reduce duplicate audits and drive greater standardization of ground handling processes worldwide. And to drive further simplification of audit processes and to ensure GHSPs’ readiness for the ISAGO audit, IATA launched the free Operational Portal to help GHSPs and airlines to perform a gap analysis between their ground operational procedures and IGOM. The tool helps to identify operational variations with the intention to reduce them and standardize procedures according to IGOM. In addition, a new checklist is being developed that mirrors IGOM and Airport Handling Manual requirements, allowing for remote documentation validation through the operational portal.

BFK Aviation Expands in Africa, Plans International Growth

When two of sub-Saharan Africa’s most prominent business aviation concerns announced a joint venture in Guyana in March, the industry took notice. Both companies saw their domestic performance plateauing, and international expansion seemed the next logical step.

“We came across an opportunity in South Africa, a project that we’d been working on since early 2022,” Dawit Lemma, CEO of Krimson Aviation, told AIN. As a groundhandling specialist, Krimson needed a flight services partner. The market in Guyana is witnessing an oil, gas, and petroleum (OGP) explosion. “We saw an opportunity to use our expertise to provide ground services to the OGP operators,” Lemma said. “The local operator there, Xen Aviation, was interested not just in ground handling, but also in flight operations. That’s when my thoughts turned to Bestfly.”

Lemma saw a common interest area, given Bestfly’s status as a key stakeholder in oil and gas support in Angola. “We are very familiar with Bestfly’s capabilities on the continent,” he said.

Nuno Pereira, managing director of Bestfly, told AIN its five-year expansion plan had achieved as much as it could have to date in Angola. “We wanted to continue to grow,” he said. “The Bestfly-Krimson partnership—now Guyanese company BFK Aviation—was a no-brainer because, in reality, Bestfly is setting up a series of joint ventures and partnerships around the world that include but are not limited to the Caribbean, Europe-to-Europe, Europe-to-West Africa, and other areas, like Dubai and the Middle East.

“It was a very good opportunity to integrate our growth strategy. That’s why we decided to go ahead and expand the footprint of Bestfly to Guyana in partnership with our Ethiopian colleagues. It is basically a south-south approach, ultimately expanding to support local African leaders in the aviation industry.”

Although the initial target is South Africa, the expansion will almost certainly impact business aviation in Africa, where both partners are experienced hands. Pereira held the role of vice chairman of the African Business Aviation Association (AfBAA) for five years, while Lemma was the long-time AfBAA Ethiopian chapter representative and is now its international director. In addition to focusing on business aviation hotspots in South Africa, Nigeria, and Morocco, both men are seen as leading the charge in the rest of Africa.

Pereira said BFK’s emphasis was not just on OGP but also on scheduled regional services, maintenance, ground handling, FBO, and cargo handling—all dependent on the requirements and capacity on the ground. It will also move into capacity building, training, and consulting. “We’re not entering as an extractor,” he said. “We’re coming in as a contributor or builder of the aviation sector and the community at large.”

BFK’s target is emerging markets, as it comes from a continent that is full of them, Lemma said. “Going into other emerging markets is, if not exactly niche, something we’re good and successful at,” he said. “Wherever it’s hard to operate, or difficult for us, it’s a business opportunity. The ecosystem that we’re trying to develop at BFK should and can be applied to any emerging market: South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Why not even Europe? Why not Eastern Europe, for example?”

Both companies are prospering on their home turf. In 2022, Krimson saw Its client base, revenues, and number of flights all grow by at least 40 percent. “It’s the right trajectory,” Lemma said. “Krimson is very much at the plateau of where we can expand to, not just geographically, but in services because our business model is very limited. For all intents and purposes, we’re brokers: we get requests from clients and we find a third party that can fulfill that.”

The company’s eight-year expansion plan to 2030 involves shifting from subcontractor and broker services to fulfillment. “In addition to BFK, we’re also looking at consolidating our presence in the region—making the Horn of Africa ours. Southern Africa is dominated by South Africa, Central Africa by Bestfly, Western Africa by Nigeria and that market, and Eastern Africa by the Kenyan market providers. We want to be in the Horn of Africa; we like going to places where it’s very difficult to operate.”

Krimson’s operations in Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and South Sudan, are quickly catching up with home base numbers in Ethiopia. “We’re preparing for that plateau by consolidating our resources and focusing on making the Horn of Africa Krimson’s region, our home territory, and transitioning from broker to actually fulfilling services with equipment and facilities,” he said.

Lemma continues to maintain that any FBO Krimson sets up will not be in Ethiopia, but this has nothing to do with market size. “The weekend during the African Union summit alone would justify an FBO,” he said. “Let’s say the non-competitive or monopolistic nature of the market regulations is still a limiting factor. To be honest with you, Ethiopia does see a few more operators, but I haven’t seen any shift in 10 years, which means the private sector is developing.

“It’s still a case of fighting for scraps off the table of our beloved home carrier, Ethiopian Airlines. As much as I would love to do it, it would take the same amount of energy and resources to set up three FBOs in other African countries as it would launch an FBO here.”

Lemma is studying Ghana, not just with FBOs in mind but as a West African springboard. “We’re in discussion to set up an office there to manage the Western African region,” he said. “We feel Ghana is aligned with a lot of our criteria. It’s a tremendously emerging market.

“Ghana is going to be the first base we set up outside of Addis Ababa and that’s really to cater to the Western African market and opportunity. Ironically, this is a testament to how sometimes stars align. With Bestfly in Senegal, there’s an opportunity for us to own that corridor, that coastline from Ghana all the way west up to Senegal and everything in between.”

From its Angolan base, Bestfly has invested in other locations. Last year was another period of growth, and its presence is expanding worldwide. In 2021, it acquired WestJet in Portugal, as well as TICV’s operation in Cape Verde, which now offers scheduled and charter flights as Bestfly Cabo Verde, he said.

MORE GROWTH

“In 2022, we grew our fleet to 30 aircraft, in Angola, Cape Verde, Dubai, and Congo Brazzaville, where we have permanent operations," Lemma said. "We also recently saw major growth in our oil and gas operations through the award from Chevron’s Cabinda Gulf Oil Company of the offshore Angola contract.”

In March, Bestfly also announced a partnership in Senegal with local company Dakar Jet Center. It expects operations to be ready by the end of the year, on the same timeline as Guyana. “It is already a very strong aviation company,” Pereira said. “We are open to all. We have started an expansion strategy that also led us to take 50 percent of a ground-handling company in Portugal.”

It deployed four fully OGP-compliant Leonardo Helicopters AW169s bought directly from the factory in 2021. It also bought another five helicopters from Leonardo for deployment in oil and gas support. The first was delivered in March and went to Senegal to do demonstration flights and static displays.

“On the fixed-wing side, we expect to grow our ATR [regional turboprop] fleet to between eight and 10, which will include additions to the Cape Verde and BFK fleets, and our operation in Aruba, where we expect to start commercial services during the summer,” Pereira said. He expects the Embraer 190 fleet to go to between four to six aircraft in the next 18 months, while on the business-jet side he sees the fleet increasing to about three big jets.

“We are planning to make Bombardier Globals and the Gulfstream G550 the backbone of our business jet fleet, the first of which should be in service by the summer,” Periera said. “One thing we are very excited about is that, for the first time, Bestfly, in partnership with the Aruba Registry, has a presence this week at EBACE with a G550 in our new colors. The aircraft on static display presents the new product: Bestfly Executive.”

Bestfly is starting to differentiate its branding in the oil and gas and commercial sectors from its business aviation operations. “We also want to reinforce our leadership in ground handling and FBO in Angola, as well as in our plans in Cape Verde, Senegal, and other jurisdictions that are too early to call right now,” he concluded.

SIA, Cathay flag weaker cargo traffic amid strong passenger demand

Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific have flagged challenges in a weakening cargo market, even as passenger traffic continues to climb on the back of strong demand recovery.

In separate traffic results, both carriers reported a drop in cargo loads for April, with Cathay attributing a 10% month-on-month drop in overall tonnage to the holiday period during the month, while SIA blamed weaker demand for an 11% decline in cargo traffic. Source: Wikimedia Commons

A Cathay Pacific 747-8F in Sydney in 2018

Cathay’s chief customer and commercial officer Lavinia Lau says the airline expects demand to improve in May, pointing out one area of “positive momentum” was ecommerce demand from Hong Kong and Mainland China.

She adds: “We are continuing to adjust our freighter network to reflect any significant changes in trade flows and business opportunities.

On the passenger side, Cathay carried close to 1.4 million passengers in April, a significant improvement compared to the low base in the year ago, when Hong Kong’s borders were shut.

Lau says April was “busy” for the airline on the passenger business, given that it coincided with the Easter weekend holidays, as well as the lead-up to the week-long Labour Day holidays in early May.

“We continued to increase our passenger flight capacity and add more frequencies to destinations in Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia and Japan. Demand for premium class seats has also been positive, driven by both corporate and leisure travel,” says Lau.

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SIA and its low-cost unit Scoot, meanwhile, carried close to 2.7 million passengers, up 85% year on year. Traffic grew 66%, while capacity was up 37%.

The airline notes there was “robust leisure demand” during the Easter holidays in April, led by traffic to and from east Asia, which includes South Korea, Japan and China.

Signature Aviation Inaugurates Scotland FBO

A large gathering of guests and local officials attended the grand opening of a Signature Flight Support FBO at Edinburgh Airport in Scotland. (Photo: Signature Aviation)

Signature Aviation held a grand-opening celebration for its newly completed FBO at Scotland’s Edinburgh Airport (EGPH) late last week. The facility, which took two years to build, features a 5,575-sq-ft (515-sq-m) terminal with discrete entrances for passengers and crew. Amenities include VIP suites, conference room, coffee bar, business center, crew lounge, and 48-space secure vehicle parking lot. The location has nearly 70,000 sq ft (6,497 sq m) of dedicated ramp, which allows it to handle any size aircraft up to an Airbus A330. It is fully self-sufficient with its own equipment ranging from a pair of fuel trucks to airstairs, tugs, ground power units, and belt loaders.

Signature has invested substantially in the FBO and its security screening equipment. Installation of a CT3 X-ray machine upgrade is planned for early 2024. The company is in negotiations with airlines to introduce its Elite Class product there, which will allow commercial passengers to use the facility for arriving and departing flights. “We are looking forward to a successful partnership with Edinburgh Airport as we grow our business in Scotland and the UK," said John-Angus Smith, Signature’s managing director for EMEA.

Singapore Airlines Cancels Orders For Eight Boeing 737 MAX 8s

On Tuesday, Singapore Airlines Group announced it reached an agreement with Boeing to cancel orders for eight Boeing 737 MAX 8s, plus some changes to its widebody deliveries. The carrier made this statement during the release of its full-year 2022/2023 financial results.

Decreasing the order book

Today, Singapore Airlines (SIA) announced the company had posted the highest net profit in its 76-year history. The company also informed the financial market about the latest fleet developments.

During the year, Singapore Airlines took delivery of one Airbus A350-900 in March and one Boeing 787-10 in April 2023. In addition to these widebodies, the airline also added 737 MAX 8, which has been refurbished to include the new cabin

easyJet flight from Bristol declares emergency

An easyJet scheduled flight from Bristol to Lisbon has declared a general emergency, squawking 7700 whilst enroute.

easyJet flight U26211, operated by an Airbus A319-100 registered G-EZFU, has declared a general emergency as it passes to the east of France enroute to Lisbon Airport (LIS).

The nature of the emergency is unknown, and the aircraft appears to be reestablishing on track to Lisbon at this stage, after having altered course towards the French coast abeam Bordeaux, just after the emergency declaration.

Flight U26211 continues to make good its flight plan track for Lisbon, currently in the cruise at FL350. The aircraft is now in the Madrid Flight Information Region (FIR), and weather is VFR for its arrival in Lisbon.

Agreement reached in Germany on aviation security workers' pay - industry group

Two German unions and an aviation security association negotiating on behalf of 25,000 workers have reached an agreement on pay and management allowances, capping off a series of strikes in Germany amid a cost of living crisis. The BDLS aviation security association said on Wednesday that the agreement with the Verdi and German Civil Service Federation (dbb) unions included additional pay for night shifts, Sundays and public holidays, as well as new allowances for executives. "The agreement poses major challenges for the employers' side and will not be easy to implement in economic terms," the association said in a statement. High inflation in Europe's largest economy has prompted a wave of strikes in recent months as workers demand higher pay to offset the rising cost of living. In April, strikes by aviation security workers at four German airports caused disruptions for tens of thousands of travellers.

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