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...

Thai Airways' first A380 (& III): getting onboard

And, finally, the A380 was delivered to Thai Airways in a ceremony with Thai dances and the speeches...

And the Sun was shinning, which makes the A380 look a lot better!

And we got onboard, which was quite an experience, because I manage to see some parts of the aicraft that are normally out of bounds, such as the cockpit and the crew rest areas!

First class

First class toilet

First class lounge

Business class

Economy class

An old friend seen from the window: the Concorde!

The crew rest area, a part of the aircraft usually off-limits (an A380 has a crew of 23!)

The cockpit (it takes only one month of training for the pilots to transition from A340 to A380!)

Thai Airways' first A380 (II): outside the aircraft

After visiting the A380 assembly plant, our group headed towards the Airbus Delivery Center, where Thai Airways was going to take delivery of the aircraft the following day.

And there she was...waiting for us! we did not get onboard, but could walk all around and below it!

Ah! and we later got to enjoy some great Thai food at a chateau nearby...but this is not a topic for this blog :-)

Thai Airways' first A380 (I): visit to the Airbus factory

I attended my first aircraft delivery ceremony this week and I also had the chance to visit an aircraft factory for the first time in my life. Both experiences were simply amazing!

I went to Toulouse to cover the delivery of Thai Airway's first Airbus A380. The Thai carrier has 6 of them on order as it goes ahead with its fleet renewal plan, that wil see all of its Boeing 747s phased out in a period of 5 years from now.

So I went to Toulouse as part of a group of journalists covering the event, not only from industry and trade journals, but also from Thai general media, many of whom had flown to France for the occasion. And it is here that I would like to take the chance to thank both Airbus and Thai Airways for the great organization and hospitality during the visit.

Once at Airbus' facilities we got an overview of the Airbus A380 programme and of Thai Airway's plans for their A380's deployment. The press tour included also a visit to the A380 assembly plant, an amazing building that we were told is the largest single-roof industrial building in Europe, it had been built on a greenfield site in 2004 with the sole purpose of assembling the largest aircraft of the Airbus family.

One of the things that I found most amazing is that far from a noisy and buzzing factory floor, as I was expecting, the factory is a actually a quite place, but not because of lack of activity, during our visit work was going on simultaneously on several airframes, but because the orderly and highly automated way the work is done. For those of you interested in seeing how an Airbus A380 is made, here are some pictures I took during the factory tour. In the next post I will narrate our encounter with Thai's first A380.

The A380's fuselage sections are assembled in Toulouse...

...although the components are being shipped from all over Europe

the nose

the wings

the tail

An A380 being readied for Emirates

the landing gear

View from inside the Airbus factory

The weekly airline business recap

While many in the airline industry will be enjoying the warm weather at Abu Dhabi for #Routes, I thought about putting together some of the airline stories that caught my attention this week...

Starting with Thai Airways. getting its first Airbus A380 (the first of 6 ordered by thailand's flag carrier). I had the chance to attend the delivery ceremony in Toulouse and will certainly be publishing a longer blog post about this event shortly, but in the meantime you can check out what Flightglobal wrote about it.

By the way, Thai's A380 fleet will be growing soon, aircraft number 2 and 3 are already in Hamburg to  get all the necessary fittings, while number 4 is already out of the assembly line, you can see it here, next to two Malaysian A380s (there was also a China Southern A380 next to them).

More A380s ready to head East, where growth is

And the "low-costization" of European short haul continues with Lufthansa's announcement that it is going to launch a low cost airline of its own, integrating Germanwings operation along the way. While the new brand will be, for a start, restricted to Germany's non-hub airports, will see if it ends up like Iberia Express, taking also a sizeable share of the flag carrier's mainline operations.

By the way, Airbus marketing VP Bob Lange reaffirmed to a group of journalists attending Thai Airways' A380 delivery ceremony that the European consortium is sticking to its sales goals for the year, that is, of selling 30 more A380s. This was hours before Emirates Tim Clark expressed interest in acquiring another 30 to 40 A380s in the near future...coincidence?

In any case, with more A380s or not, the story of growth in the United Arab Emirates airline industry is simply amazing, as this report confirms, from 18 million in 2001 to over 70 million in 2011 and I guess it would look even more spectacular if we went 20 years back in time.

Oh! and I almost forgot...I got to fly BA's "Dove"!

Aviation news of the week (15-7-12)

As you might imagine, the Farnborough air show generated most of the top aviation news this week. Part of the routine of each major air show is the stream of aircraft order announcements, and this time it was no exception:

Boeing announced a  150-strong order for its Boeing 737 (100 737 Max and 50 737 NG) from United Airlines. By the way, with this order Boeing passes the 10,000th aircraft mark in the history of its Boeing 737 family. A truly remarkable achievement!

AirAsia confirmed it is talks with Bombardier to order up to 100 CS300 aircraft. If this order materializes it is going to be a really important achievement for the CSeries programme, that really needs new orders soon! On another page, AirBaltic announced an order for 15 CS300. So not a bad show for Bombardier after all.

Cathay Pacific confirmed it is going ahead with the A350-1000, a vote of confidence in this aircraft programme after it went througha  redesign last year.

And on non-Farnborough news, the government of Uruguay is going to auction the assets of bankrupt flag carrier Pluna, that has stopped flying. Bidding for the airline's Bombardier CRJ900 Next Generation aircraft will start at $135M.

Finally, I thought you might like this video fro the Farnborough air show, where you will be able to see how an Airbus A380 looks like when maneuvering at low altitude.

Have a great week!

Highlights of the Farnborough Air Show

Like every other year, the small Farnborough airfield has become the meeting point for aviation professionals and enthusiasts for around the World. This was not my first visit to the Farnborough Air Show, been here in 2006, when I could first admire the majestic (and quiet!) Airbus A380, and the 2008 edition, when the smaller size of the flying and static displays was an unmistakable sign that the economy was already in trouble.

This time, however, I was able to see Farnborough from an entirely new angle, a professional angle, since I had the chance to experience the air show working together with the  colleagues of the Flightglobal team.

Flightglobal’s chalet at the show was in a privileged position, overlooking the runway, and it had a perfect view of the flight display.  As you might imagine, I did not pass the opportunity to do some planespotting. I must say this year, besides the always spectacular to watch, military jets, the highlight for me was the Boeing 787, an aircraft that I “met” for the first time. Qatar Airways brought its newly delivered Dreamliner and  it did not disappoint. It is a beautiful plane, elegant and very quiet...I can’t wait to fly on it!

But the Boeing 787 was not the only “first” at the show, the Superjet was also there, looking good in Aeroflot livery.

And not exactly a new plane, but I also found quite interesting this Embraer 190 in the bright colours of the Ukrainian carrier Aerosvit.

On the business side of the show, most of the attention was focused on the 737 Max vs. Airbus A320 Neo, with Boeing having the upper hand this time, as it secured 225 firm orders, including those for the 737 Max from United Airlines and leasing companies ALC and ALAFCO, whereas arch-rival Airbus managed to secure only 54 firm orders.

But how long is this dupolistic dominance of the narrow-body market going to last? 

One of the things I personally found more interesting of this show is the performance of the "alternative" manufacturers (by alternative I mean those that are neither of the big two).

It is particularly noticeable the apparent consolidation of Bombardier's CSeries programme, that managed to secure several new orders for its CS300 and has attracted the interest also of AirAsia.  Other up-start narrow-body programmes have also generated some interesting news during the show, like Misubishi Aircraft securing 100 additional orders for its MRJ from SkyWest and Comac reaching an agreeement with IAG for the further development of the C-919.

A different story is Irkut's MC-21 programme, that is still generating considerable doubts, not least of them its final branding (for a start, there is not even a consensus among industry observers: should it be pronnounced as “C” or as “S” as it would be if respecting the Russian pronunciation of the cyrillic "C"?). 

These alternative narrow-body programmes face an uphill battle but if they manage to hold their ground we are almost guaranteed to have very interesting air shows in years to come! 

Oh! and almost forgot!...in future air shows I would expect to see more of these too!

A tribute to Spanair, in pictures...

I travel often through Spanish airports, where Spanair aircraft were a common sight. They came in different sizes and colours, the result of a convulse corporate history. Spanair, we will miss you! 

Here is my photo-tribute:

The old livery, here a Spanair Airbus at Madrid-Barajas

And the new livery...this one spotted at BCN

 Spanair was a proud Star Alliance partner

A Boeing 717, we'll see some more of these in the European skies soon!

 Spanair was positioning itself as "the Barcelona airline": here a map of its network in a commercial advert

A Spanair MD-83 with the city of Barcelona in the background

Spanair EC-GVO taxiing at BCN

Spanair's fleet was initially made of MD-83s, some of these have remained with the carrier until the end

The old and new liveries side by side at BCN

Despite management efforts, the outlook had always been really foggy for Spanair...