Vueling keeps growing, plans to fly to a 100 cities from Barcelona

More like this coming soon!

There was quite a lot of expectation today to hear what Vueling had to announce.

And there were interesting novelties, as Vueling continues to upgrade its product with the introduction of a business class. One step that was anticipated as it fits into the carrier's strategy to target business travellers.  So, this announcement did not really come as a surprise, as I had already pointed out in these pages how there were objective measures to qualify Vueling as a hybrid airline rather than a low cost carrier and the airline's top managers had already provided some hints about the imminence of this move.

Regarding fleet renewal and expansion programme Vueling will be getting some 9 brand-new aircraft of the A320 family shortly (at the moment is still flying some Iberia-then-Clickair 1990s-vintage A320s) and some of them will be equipped with wi-fi.  The first (unanswered) question that comes to my mind is whether this means the end of Vueling's flirtation with Bombardier's CSeries...

Another important novelty is the massive route expansion out of Barcelona and into Europe and Africa.   The new twice daily service between Barcelona and London Gatwick really stands out, because until now Vueling had avoided head-to-head competition on this route with Easyjet and Ryanair. Also of note is the airline'e first foray into sub-saharan Africa, where it is "taking over" the niche route to Banjul, that used to be operated quite successfully by now-defunct rival Spanair. New routes to Morocco reinforce the growing presence of Vueling in Africa, that I commented already a few months ago. 28 new routes in total for the summer season (you can find the list here) that will bring to 100 the number of direct destinations operated by Vueling from Barcelona.

In another example of the company's hybridisation, Vueling's CEO Alex Cruz said that he aims to make of Barcelona one of Europe's top hubs (I guess he was referring to intra-European connections, since there are still few long-haul flights at Barcelona that Vueling's passengers can connect too). In order to support this claim he revealed that transit passengers already make 20% of total traffic (not a bad number for a company that was not initially conceived as a hub-and-spoke network carrier!).

The hub-in-the-Med possibility that I outlined nearly two years ago might finally come to fruition after all...

Aviation videos (I): do not get too close to a jet engine!

In addition to the text articles I publish in this blog regularly I would like to regularly share with you spme aviation-related videos that I come across. Here is today's video! I am sure that most of you are already familiar with plane-spotters beach next to Sint Maarten airport in the Caribbean...see what can happen if you place yourself next to the blast of a jet engine...! (btw, there is  also really great footage towards the end of the video of an incoming Boeing 747!)

What's really new with the new Iberia Express?

Time to maneuver for Iberia

The answer is: very little!

For those readers that might not be familiar with the whole story, Spain's flag carrier Iberia, now part of the IAG Group, is starting a new low cost airline that is to take over most short -haul routes from its parent company, so that what's left of Iberia can concentrate on the long-haul, primarily its most important market: the links between Spain and South America.

This move is due to the need to lower costs, forced by the strong competition Iberia is facing at its own hub by low cost carriers (Ryanair is already number one airline in Spain!).

A new airline in Spain then? hardly...well at least from the point of view of passengers (if you are an Iberia pilot, this is another matter). From the informations that are being made public, Iberia Express product is not going to be significantly different from that Iberia currently offers on short-haul routes:

Same aircraft, as Iberia Express is going to use Iberia's current A320-family fleet

Same route network as Iberia Express will be progressively taking over some of Iberia's domestic and, at a later stage, European routes (while possibly Iberia proper might keep some key European routes with heavy business traffic such as those from Madrid to London Heathrow and Barcelona).

Same level of service: while it is still not sure whether Iberia Express will offer single-class service or provide some sort of premium service, for those flying economy there are possibly going to be any noticeable differences, since Iberia has long been a no-frills carrier when it comes to economy class on short-haul routes.

I also assume the new airline will use the same commercial channels than Iberia and that you will also be able to buy connection flights and multi-leg flight itineraries, after all one of its major roles would be to feed Iberia's long-haul, and Iberia's American network would not be viable without its large proportion of connecting passengers.

Why go all the way and create a new airline then?

It's primarily a legal and labour relations matter...as IAG chariman Fernando Vazquez explained at a recent conference at the London School iof Economics, Spanish labour laws made almost impossible to change the labour relations framework within the company, so it was easier to start an entirely new entity and transfer its assets to it. Of course this has not gone down well with Iberia's unions that have resorted to a protracted industrial action campaign.

IAG's CEO, Willie Walsh, seems unimpressed, as he is well aware that Iberia is IAG's underperforming leg (while BA made €592M in 2011, Iberia lost €61M.) and can ill afford to keep its high-cost structure if it wants to survive and be around in the long-term.

Iberia is not alone in this move, Air France is also trying to cut costs the same way, although its efforts have focused on French provincial cities that had limited Air France service, rather than in its own hub.

It is not the first time Iberia enters the low cost market, it already did it with Clickair, a low cost it started to compete with then-startup Vueling in Barcelona (with whom it later merged) and in the last few years through its shareholding in vueling, but these were projects with a life of their own...we'll see how it works when applied to its own brand...

By the way, for those of you that are into planespotting, here is a picture of what looks like Iberia Express' first aircraft, there is no consensus as to whether this is the final livery or not, though!