http://www.albawaba.com/ Etihad Airways increases Abu Dhabi – Cairo flights to four-a-day Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, today announced an increase in capacity between Abu Dhabi and Cairo with the introduction of a fourth daily scheduled flight, effective 27 March 2016. The route has grown to become one of the most popular in Etihad Airways’ network, building on strong commercial ties between the capital cities of the UAE and Egypt. With a large Egyptian population in the UAE, more flights provide greater options for expatriates travelling back home for work or holiday. Etihad Airways’ services are conveniently timed to offer enhanced travel options for business and leisure travellers between the UAE and Egypt with greater choice of flights across the day. Additionally, passengers travelling between Egypt and the GCC, South and North East Asia, and India will benefit from increased and better connecting options over the airline’s Abu Dhabi hub. To India, Etihad Airways and its strategic equity partner Jet Airways offer more than 250 weekly flights across 15 destinations. Over two million guests have flown on the Cairo route since its launch in 2004, becoming a key market among the 116 global destinations served by Etihad Airways. Kevin Knight, Etihad Airways’ Chief Strategy and Planning Officer, said: ―Etihad Airways is focused on offering guests more choice. The introduction of a fourth daily flight to Cairo demonstrates our commitment to a market that has shown strong growth in passenger and freight traffic since the route was launched almost 12 years ago. ―Attracting both commercial and leisure business, the additional flights linking Cairo and Abu Dhabi with connections beyond will help cater for the growing demand on one of our most popular North African and global routes.‖
Birdwatch News Archive The world celebrates its wetlands Tomorrow is the annual World Wetlands Day, which marks the date of the adoption of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands by encouraging people to get outdoors and enjoy their nearest watery habitat. The Convention on Wetlands was instituted on 2 February 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Each year since 1997, the Ramsar Secretariat has provided materials to help raise public awareness about the importance and value of wetlands. Events will take place on every continent except Antarctica, including photo contests, guided walks and presentations including at least 380 in Britain and Ireland, and many hundred more aroun the world. You can find out what's going on near you to help you join in the event by visiting the World Wetlands Day website. The Convention on Wetlands is popularly abbreviated as the Ramsar Convention and is an international treaty to conserve the world's most important wetlands and manage them sustainably. It recognises the economic and cultural importance of these prolific habitats, as well as their ecological necessity. With its corporate sponsors, the day is dedicated to supporting this sustainability by drawing the public's attention the plight of wetlands and the humans and wildlife which depend on them. Several businesses dependent on a free-flowing supply of water also fun the habitats' maintenance, flying environmental field workers, scientists and educators across the global Ramsar network to further knowledge, skills and understanding of major environmental issues and initiatives, and to help conserve some of these unique habitats. Star Alliance has partnered with UNESCO-Man and the Biosphere, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and have sponsored the prize for the Wetlands youth photo contest, a chance to win a free flight to a famous wetland. Livelihoods from fishing, rice farming, travel, tourism, and water provision all depend on wetlands, and they host a huge variety of life, protect our coastlines, provide natural sponges against river flooding and store carbon dioxide to regulate climate change. Unfortunately, they are often viewed as wasteland and more than 64 per cent of our wetlands have disappeared since 1900. Enabling people to make a decent living and at the same time ensuring that wetlands can still provide their essential benefits do not have to be conflicting goals, says the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. You can help spread awareness about the importance of wetlands by joining in a World Wetlands Day 2016 event. Use the hashtags #WorldWetlandsDay #WetlandsForOurFuture on Twitter and see more at the World Wetlands Day website.
http://www.anna.aero/ Air China becomes fourth carrier to serve Ibaraki
Air China on 30 January began twice-weekly flights (Saturdays and Sundays) between Hangzhou(HGH) and Ibaraki (IBR) in Japan. The 1,968-kilometre route will be flown by the Star Alliance carrier’s A319s. No other carrier serves this route. Ibaraki Airport, located less than 100 kilometres from Tokyo, is currently served by local carrier Skymark Airlines, as well as Spring Airlines and China Southern Airlines. Air China thus becomes the airport’s fourth carrier, with a fifth, V Air, set to arrive in mid-March.
After a year marred by terrorist attacks and employee strikes, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa might have expected that falling jet fuel prices would mean a better 2016. But low-cost rival Ryanair served a warning on Tuesday that Europe's legacy carriers will be unable to reap the full benefit of that windfall. Fuel is one of the biggest expenses for airlines -- accounting for 40 percent of Ryanair's costs -- so the benefits of cheaper fuel are real, as long as they can be retained. Airlines hedge the bulk of their fuel costs and European carriers are forced to purchase fuel in costly dollars, limiting some of their gains. Lufthansa and Air France have hedged a smaller proportion of their fuel costs than Ryanair, meaning they stand to benefit more from the falling cost of jet fuel.
Fuel Costs Tank The price of jet fuel has fallen almost 40 percent in the past year
But unlike the U.S.'s oligopolistic industry, Europe's airline market remains fragmented. So Lufthansa and Air-France should be worried by Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary's prediction on Monday that air fares could fall this year as airlines pass on some of their fuel savings to customers. Ryanair CFO Neil Sorahan noted that because Ryanair's cost base is much lower than rivals, the company is better placed to win a price war, should one materialize.
Lagging Profitability Europe's airline industry is far less lucrative than that of the U.S.
With Ryanair and low-cost rivals all adding lots of new capacity, that seems a distinct possibility. Ryanair forecast fares would decline 6 percent in the fourth quarter (in part due to the falling pound). Lufthansa's also aware of the risk. It expects earnings growth in 2016 but told investors this month that yields, a measure of average ticket prices, would keep falling. Ryanair's unit costs excluding fuel are expected to drop 2 percent this fiscal year, even though the airline has been expanding into more costly primary airports, as opposed to those miles away from the passenger's final destination. Ryanair expects passenger numbers to jump 26 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter from the year-earlier period and reach 106 million for the year ending in March, slightly more than previous guidance of 105 million. With Ryanair expanding fast in its German home market, Lufthansa is trying to respond with a lost-cost service of its own: Eurowings. But the need to cut costs doesn't seem to have sunk in with workers, who went on strike repeatedly last year. Air France was forced to scale back plans to expand its Transavia low-cost arm in 2014 and in October employees ripped the shirts off the backs of management over proposed job cuts, suggesting they aren't entirely convinced of the need for change either. Ryanair's projection that its passenger numbers will increase by more than two-thirds by 2024 haven't gone unnoticed by investors, however.
Taking Off Ryanair shares have outperformed other European legacy carriers
The stock trades at more than 15 times estimated earnings for the fiscal year ending in March, three times Lufthansa's valuation. With some 350 Boeing 737s on order, Ryanair's premium could prove rich if the industry enters another cyclical downturn. Iata noted in December that historically the airline industry profitability cycle lasts between eight and nine years from trough to trough. Ominously, the low point of the last cycle occurred in 2009. Ryanair's balance sheet offers some protection. The company had 350 million euros ($381 million) of net cash at the end of December, and felt confident enough to announce an 800 million-euro share buyback on Monday. Contrast that with Lufthansa, which scrapped its dividend last February and which had 9.2 billion euros in net debt and pension liabilities at the end of September. If the airline industry again encounters turbulence, Ryanair looks better-positioned to ride it out.
http://www.bloomberg.com/ Lufthansa Shakes Up Management After Split Into Two Airline Arms Deutsche Lufthansa AG has shaken up its management as part of a push to save 500 million euros ($543 million) by consolidating operations under two airline divisions. Sadiq Gillani, former head of strategy across the group, will move to the Eurowings discount arm with responsibility for developing its network and fleet. He’ll be succeeded in his old role by William Willms, who previously worked in finance at the company’s maintenance unit. Wolfgang Kohlhagen, who was in charge of Lufthansa’s Frankfurtbased cabin crew during their most disruptive strike ever in November, takes charge of health management, to be replaced by Kai Duve, the former head of internal audit. Raimund Mueller becomes chief pilot after previously running Munich flights, with incumbent Werner Knorr returning to the cockpit. The changes, revealed Monday by spokesman Andreas Bartels in response to questions from Bloomberg, are aimed at speeding decision-making and reducing complexity. They follow the reorganization of the group into two units: one formed of Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian Airlines and run by Harry Hohmeister, the other comprising businesses being brought under the Eurowings brand, led by Karl Ulrich Garnadt. The process will involve 150 job cuts as the number of management layers is reduced to three from four. Nico Buchholz, who managed the groupwide fleet and has joined Bombardier Inc., won’t be replaced, Bartels said. His duties will instead be part of the remit of Detlef Kayser, who took over a wider fleet and strategy role on Jan. 1.
Five foreign authorities inspected security measures at airport: official Chairman of Cairo International Airport Company Mohamed Saeed Mahrous said that five authorities affiliated with five western companies have inspected the airport's security measures. During a press conference on Tuesday, Mahrous said a committee from the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency, which visited Egypt earlier, requested inspecting five checkpoints including passengers traveling or arriving, luggage, fences and shipping of cargo. The outcome of the inspection will be announced next week. Authorities of German, British and Kazakhstani aviation as well as a Canadian company on behalf of US aviation also inspected the security measures followed at the airport. The Civil Aviation Ministry, according to Mahrous, signed an agreement with a company affiliated to a supreme security authority to secure the airport fences at the cost of LE28 million during the first phase, which includes installing 11 cameras. The second phase includes a system to monitor movement in parking lots at the airport. AVIT, affiliated to the Egyptian Holding Company for Airports and Air Navigation, will carry out the necessary measures. It is supposed to fix around 140 cameras to cover the parking lots in four months. The searches come as many countries halted flights to Egypt following the crash of a Russian passenger plan in October in Sinai, which was claimed by ISIS although has been denied by Egyptian authorities until investigations are completed.
http://atwonline.com/ EASA seeks views on two-people-in-the-cockpit policy EASA has launched an online survey to assess the effectiveness of maintaining two people in the cockpitduring flight, as recommended in the wake of the Germanwings tragedy. On March 24, 2015, a Germanwings Airbus A320 was on a scheduled flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf when it crashed, killing all 150 people aboard. A preliminary report revealed that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, alone on the flight deck, switched the selected altitude from 38,000 ft. to 100 ft.—the minimum value possible on an Airbus A320—and increased the speed of the aircraft, setting in motion an intentional fatal descent into the French Alps. Just three days after the crash, on March 27, 2015, EASA recommended that two crew members, including at least one qualified pilot, should occupy the cockpit during flight, or that the operator should implement ―equivalent measures,‖ however this is not a requirement. This recommendation was based on the technical investigation performed by France’s Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA) and was maintained by the July 2015 Germanwings Task Force report. EASA is now seeking feedback from ―operators, pilots and cabin crew, authorities and other interested parties‖ to assess the effectiveness of the two-person-in-the-cockpit recommendation. It launched an online survey on Feb. 1 and has set March 11 as the closing date for submissions. EASA asks for contact details to be provided, but all responses will be aggregated and kept confidential. ―By April 2016 the agency [EASA] will publish on the EASA website a summary of the answers/comments received, following an evaluation of the answers received. The summary will be followed by an agency proposal on how to implement the recommendations of the Germanwings taskforce,‖ EASA said. In the US, there is no explicit rule requiring two crew members to be in the cockpit during flight; however, this has evolved as an FAA-approved standard operating procedure for US carriers.
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