The legendary air shuttle Barcelona-Madrid: the "Puente Aéreo"

Early morning at Madrid airport, a familiar view for many Barcelona-based passengers

If in my previous post I explained how the Spanish airport authority is using replicas of some venerable aircraft to advertise her state-of-the-art facilities and, for this post, we are not leaving Spain yet, because during my recent trip to Madrid I had the chance to experience another of Spanish aviation's legendary institutions: Iberia's "Puente Aéreo" (the Air Shuttle Barcelona-Madrid).

For those who are not aware, Barcelona-Madrid happens to be the air route with most traffic in the Europe, with nearly 3 million passengers per year and around 70 daily frequencies in each direction.

A large share of this traffic went through Iberia's "Puente Aéreo", an air-shuttle that was conceived as a commuter service, where you do not need a previous booking, you just show up at the airport and get on the next available flight. If a plane is full another one departs shortly after, with frequencies at peak hours could rival those of overground public transportation, every 15 minutes or so. The idea is to provide plenty of flexibility and short waiting times at airport.

The "Puente Aéreo" has its own brand identity and fare structure, separate from Iberia's other flights, even when they are doing the same route (around half of Iberia's frequencies on the Barcelona-Madrid route correspond to the "Puente Aéreo" service, with the rest being regular flights that require reservation.

The "Puente Aéreo" has been a sort of second home to generations of businessmen and politicians, ready to pay for all this flexibility and convenience and it is no wonder that, for years, it has been Iberia's most profitable route (in a way, the "Puente Aéreo" is to Iberia what LHR-New York is to British Airways)

However, a number of changes that have affected the competitive environment in which the "Puente Aéreo" was born and developed.

The first one was the liberalization of European skies. As soon as European skies opened up, new entrants Spanair and Air Europa decided to give it a try. The route quickly became a mainstay of Spanair, that now boasts 8 daily frequencies on the route and has branded the service with a similar name, making use of the concept of "air bridge", although for legal reasons it can not call it "Puente Aéreo", so it has "Puente a Barcelona/Pont a Madrid" instead. Next came low cost airlines, with Vueling entering the fray, it has now 11 daily frequencies. Surprisingly Easyjet chose not to compete on the route in spite of having a base in Madrid. Despite all this new competition, Iberia's market share on the Barcelona-Madrid air market remains at around 45%

The completion of the high-speed railway between Barcelona and Madrid has had a stronger effect on the route as it has emerged as a real alternative in terms of frequency and comfort for business travellers, taking half of the market on the Barcelona-Madrid corridor. It has forced Iberia to reduce capacity, maintaining frequencies but deploying smaller aircraft. However, the 600 kilometers between Barcelona and Madrid are really at the edge of what is considered to be a competitive distance range for high-speed railways and the airplane remains competitive, even for origin-destination traffic. Competitive pricing and the high volume of Catalan transit passengers at MAD have helped the airplane hold its ground on this route.

I am wondering what will happen the moment Ryanair starts flying between the two cities, it now has a base in both so it sounds like a logical next step...but I think the other airlines operating the route will feel the pinch, as they rely on a more price-conscious type of travele. My guess is that the "Puente Aereo" itself will be relatively inmune.

Planespotting in Moscow: a colorful festival

A Kirgizstan Airlines TU-154, see in the background the large amount of old Soviet-made airliners parked (most of these aircraft do not seem to be in active use)

Azerbaijan Airlines Boeing 757

An A320 of Armenian carrier Armavia

This year I missed Farnborough airshow because I had scheduled a trip to Moscow on the same dates, however, what I saw during my wait at Moscow's Domodedovo airport was probably more interesting for someone, like me, interested in airliners, as one after another aircraft from the myriad of airlines that operate today in Russia paraded in front of the terminal in their way to or from the runways.

I guess the first word that comes to the mind of the Western planespotter in Russia is "diversity":

Diversity of airlines, because besides the main European and Asian airlines you get to see many airlines that seldom operate outside Russia or the countries of the former Soviet Union and also diversity of aircraft, because Moscow's airports are one of the few major hubs where you can still see a considerable amount of Soviet-made aircraft alongside the typical Boeing and Airbus models.

Soviet-era airliners are becoming a rarer sight as Russian airline's fleets become Westernised, and they seem to become increasingly confined to the fleets of former Soviet republics' airlines.

This Westernisation might reverse, though, when Russia successfully launches its new range of civilian aircraft, such as the Irkut MS-21.

The evolution of the civilian aviation sector in Russia has a fascinating story and I think it deserves more than one post...so, watch this space!

Planespotting at Perpignan & the advantages of small airports

A far cry from the grandiosity of Barcelona airport (BCN), or even the super-fast growth of neighboring Girona-Costa Brava (GRO) airport, the small airport at Perpignan, in the South of France right next to the Spanish border, has preserved some of the obvious advantages of small regional airports.

If commercial offering is almost non-existent in the terminals, the no-crowds, no hassle, fast boarding experience is a strong positive point. With only a handful of flights per day (namely Air France to ORY, Ryanair to Stansted and Charleroi and the new several-times-a week Flybe routes to Birmingham and Southampton and BmiBaby to Manchester), airport transit procedures are quick and efficient.

Perpignan (Perpinya in the local Catalan language) is the entry point to the wine-growing Roussillon area, which has many important, if a bit underrated, tourist attractions, such as the Cote Vermeille (with the magnificent seaside town of Collioure/Cotlliure) and the Pyrenees. With Girona airport becoming ever more congested (although this might change again as a result of Ryanair's recent landing at BCN), Perpignan can be given serious consideration (provided you have a car) as an alternative entry point to the Costa Brava.

Planespotting at Perpignan is quite limited given the small number of regular flights at the airport, nevertheless, in my recent visits to the airfield I could see how some roadside areas on the approaches to the airport are always packed with spotters at the times when there is some air traffic at the airport. So I joined the crowd and here are the pics!

Ryanair's Boeing 737-800s are regular visitors at PGF since the Irish low-cost airline operates daily flights to London-Stansted (STN) and Charleroi (CRL)

A view of a Ryanair Boeing 737-800 by the PGF control tower

Air France A320 landing at Perpignan as seen from the airport access road. Air France operates several daily flights to Paris-Orly (ORY)

A view of the small terminal at Perpignan-Rivesaltes (PGF) with an Air France A320 in the foreground

Planespotting at Perpignan airport (PGF): the Patrouille de France

Perpignan/Perpinya (PGF) is usually a pretty quiet airport but this week was different, as it was hosting the “Patrouille de France”, the acrobatics team of the French Air Force (Armee de l’Air), that was training ahead of an upcoming air show near Perpignan, where it was scheduled to perform alonside the Breitling Jet Team.

This visit by the “Patrouille de France” was an outstanding opportunity that local planespotters did not miss (as you could see the crowd gathering all along the road that leads to the airport. The “Patrouille’s” Alpha Jets performed their exercises at low altitude and right over the airport, including the traditional display of the French tricolour, and several other acrobatic moves.

Another unusual sight at Perpignan was a C-160 Transall from the Armee de l’Air, that was there supporting the “patrouille’s” temporary deployment to the Catalan airfield.

The timing of the exercises was also coincident with the arrival of the two most frequent visitors of the airport, Ryanair’s Boeing 737 from London Stansted (STN) and Air France’s A320 from Paris-Orly (ORY), not a bad planespotting afternoon for such a small airport!

One of the Patrouille de France Alpha Jets on the tarmac at Perpignan

Air France A320 arriving from Paris-Orly passing by the Patrouille de France Alpha Jets



A view of the terminal and control tower at Perpignan, with a Transall C-160 in the foreground and a Ryanair Boeing 737 in the background

An unusual sight: a Boeing 737, a C-160 and several Alpha Jets together at PGF

Ryanair's Boeing 737 preparing to depart for London Stansted (STN)


A Transall C-160 of Armee de l'Air

Patrouille de France deployed to Perpignan airport

Two of the Alpha Jets were painted in a more military grey-green rather than the tricolour livery worn by the rest of the "Patrouille"

The tricolour

Perpignan airport fly-over

An Alpha Jet in its ascending path over Perpignan airport

MEA: the resilient airline

A MEA A320 at Beirut airport

How resilient can an airline be in the face of adversity? Well, someone at Middle East Airlines (MEA), Lebanon's flag carrier, could possibly answer this question. The MEA of today is a modern airline serving a resurgent travel market (Beirut is one of the main tourist destinations in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean region) however during it's more than sixty years of existence MEA has had to fly through extreme turbulence...

The recent halt in traffic as a result of the volcanic ash cloud has put some European airlines in a difficult situation...but try keeping an airline operating with its main base intermitently closed for over 15 years! This is what happened during Lebanon's long civil war (1975-1990), when MEA survived by leasing aircraft and seconding staff to international companies. Once the war was over it quickly rebuilt itself, however the political situation has remained extremely unstable in that region and this has repeatedly affected its capacity to operate. As recently as 2006, war forced again MEA to move its operations abroad, this time to Damascus and Amman, until the situation was normalized.

Despite all these problems MEA has kept its expansions plans and building a young all-Airbus fleet: 4 Airbus A320, 6 Airbus A321 and 4 Airbus A330, serving destinations in Europe, the Middle East and West Africa, where there is an important Lebanese community.

One of the things that have caught my attention is that MEA operates its aircraft with a very low-density seating layout compared to European airlines and well below the capacity of these aircraft types. For example, its A320 has 24 seats in business class and 102 and only in economy, 126 in total (as a reference, BA's A320s have between 149 and 156 seats), the A321 features 31 business seats and 118 in economy, 149 in total! (to make the comparison, BMI, that competes with MEA on the London (LHR)-Beirut route has a 183-seat layout, 40 seats more than MEA) I have never flown MEA, but I guess that passengers enjoy quite a lot of space on-board!

A MEA A321 with the Lebanese mountains in the background

Planespotting at Larnaca airport, Cyprus

I recently made a stopover at Larnaca's new airport, in Cyprus. I was positively impressed by the new terminal, that opened recently next to the old Larnaca airport facilities. The airport is currently handling over 5 million passengers a year, and there are plans to expand capacity to 9 million, it is managed by a French-led consortium, Hermes Airports, made up of Bouygues Batiment International (22%) Egis Projects (20%), the Cyprus Trading Corporation (a local retail group-10%), Iacovou Brothers (a local contractor-10%), Hellenic Mining (10%), Vancouver Airport Services (10%), Ireland's Dublin Airport Authority (Aer Rianta International) (10%), Charilaos Apostolides (a local construction company-5%) and Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (3%). This group also manages Cyprus' other airport at Paphos,

Besides its amplitude and luminosity, one of the things I liked is that at the tip of the terminal there is a large glass wall that lets you keep track of all the planes that land and take off. It is not a high-traffic airport but nevertheless you could do some interesting plane-spotting.


A colourful A-320 of Swiss charter company Edelweiss Air, getting ready to return a load of tan Swiss holidaymakers to Zurich




An Aeroflot A-320 arriving from Moscow. Aeroflot serves the large Russian community in Cyprus, which is also an important holiday destination for Russians.


A Eurocypria Boeing 737, see our previous entry on this Cypriot charter company


Aegean A-320 departing for Thessaloniki, Greece


A Cyprus Airways A-330, the company uses these aircraft in its London Heathrow route


A British Airways Boeing 767 departing for London Heathrow. Besides being a former British possession, Cyprus is a traditional holiday destination for British tourists

Planespotting in India (II)

An Indigo Airbus 320 queueing behind us, an Air India Boeing 747 in the background


A Jet Airways Boeing 737 on the runway

...and here some pics taken in Mumbai when we were queuing to take off. They were taken at dusk and in misty weather, hence the quality is not the best...

New airport in Catalonia

The brand-new Lleida-Alguaire airport (ILD) was inaugurated last Sunday. This is the fourth operational commercial airport in Catalonia, the others being Barcelona-El Prat (BCN), Girona (GRO) and Reus (REU) and is expected to serve a large area of Western Catalonia , whose capital is the city of Lleida (Alguaire being the town were the airport is actually located)and the Pyrenees that until now were quite distant to any of the nearest airports (Barcelona, Reus and Zaragoza (ZAZ) being the obvious alternatives).Lleida-Alguaire is also the first airport that is entirely managed by the Catalan Government through its fully-owned company Aeroports de Catalunya (the other Catalan airports are managed by the Spanish government through AENA). From the design point of view it is interesting to remark how the the facilities have been designed and painted to blend with the surrounding landscape of cereal fields (see fotos).


Foto: Wikipedia

A Vueling A320 carried authorities and journalists for the historical (and short!) inaugural flight between Barcelona and Lleida (a route that will be flown only for the occasion), where a crowd was waiting and the firemen were ready to give them the traditional honour reception, showering the aircraft with their water-hoses.


Foto by Flickr user Malkav (Adrià Ariste Santacreu) under a Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License.

Some doubts remain about the capacity of the local economy to generate enough traffic to justify the investment, specially after the fiasco of the brand-new privately owned airport at Ciudad Real (CQM), that has barely managed to attract any traffic after its inauguration (despite the availability of a high-speed rail connection and some airlines' loose approach to airport names, the 230km that separate it from the centre of Madrid made the possibility of marketing it as "Madrid-South" a bit awkward).

However, there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of the airport: to start with, the Lleida region has a high income per capita and many companies with international activities call it home, secondly, the airport can become the gateway to a vast area of the Central and Western Pyrenees, including Andorra, with a large tourism potential, becoming an interesting and less congested alternative to both Barcelona and Toulouse (TLS) (the distance to the ski slopes is roughly the same from all these three airports).

The issue of the Pyrenean airport has a long story behind. There is an airport at La Seu d'Urgell, next to the border with Andorra, that despite some talk of it being reopened, has not been used by commercial aviation since the 80s due to low profitability and operational difficulties. The opening of Lleida airport might trouble the prospects of La Seu's airport...or maybe not (if more people start flying to the Pyrenees and overall demand grows)...however this will be the topic of another future post...

In any case, ILD starts with two airlines operating four different routes:
Vueling to Paris (ORY) and Palma de Mallorca (PMI)
Ryanair to Milan-Bergamo (BGY) and Frankfurt-Hahn (HHN)

From this blog we wish you all the best to the new airport Lleida-Alguaire and hope we will writing soon about new route openings...!

The retro wave reaches airlines

Attention: this picture was not taken in the late 60s, it is quite recent!
American Airlines Boeing 737-800 Astrojet
Photo by randomduck, available under a Creative Commons license.

Retro design that were successful in their days are making a comeback, touching the nostalgic side of many. In recent years we have seen the car industry introduce the retro-looking, although newly designed, Chrysler PT Cruiser, the remake of the legendary Fiat 500 and plans have been unveiled to produce a redesigned East German icon, the Trabant.

The airline industry is not immune to this trend, airline retro bags are already a fashion staple, but now is the airlines themselves that are taking on the idea and adding retro livery designs to their own aircraft. My guess is that it might have something to do with the flying experience becoming increasingly unglamourous, with no-frills becoming the standard, congested airports and air travel becoming more of a routine. Retro livery designs take us back to a time where flying meant, above all, glamour and exclusivity, when people dressed up to board a plane as to highlight that they were among the select few, a time when flying was not a hassle (whenever you are in Washington DC I highly recommend visiting the exhibit about the evolution of air travel at the Smithsonian , where the shifting demographics of air travel are thoroughly explained)

It is probably impossible to evaluate the branding benefits of adding retro liveries, but this move will surely delight scores of planespotters wherever these planes fly to.


Foto: Air France A320 in retro livery, Munich Airport
Photo by spotterjohnsen, available under a Creative Commons license.


American Airlines Boeing 737-800 Astrojet
Photo by randomduck, available under a Creative Commons license.


Lufthansa A321
Photo by Chjab, available under a Creative Commons license.


Continental Boeing 737-900ER at Newark (EWR)
Photo by Slasher-Fun, available under a Creative Commons license.


Foto: Finnair A319 in retro livery, Helsinki Vantaa Airport
Photo by Aku from Helsinki, Finland, available under a Creative Commons license.

Planespotting at Domodedovo

We are at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, after a really intense week, ready to board our British Airways flight to London. While I look through the windows at the waiting lounge I realize what an exciting place for plane spotting can a Russian airport be.

At most Western airports, for example, around 95% of the planes are either Boeing 737 and those of the Airbus 320 family, in airports with a large number of long haul flights, like Heathrow you can also see Boeing 747s and 777s and 767s or Airbus 340s and 330s. But at a Russian airport you can see all of these plus a whole range of old soviet-era planes, new Russian planes and second-hand Western planes. This picture is a great example of the situation of aviation in Russia.

Let's have a closer look: in the foreground an old soviet-era Tupolev 134 of Rossiya Airlines, next to it an Airbus 310 of S7-Sibir Airlines, one of the largest domestic airlines in Russia. The A-310 although not a particularly old model is hard to see in Western airports as it was not as commercially successful as the A-320 and A-330 models. Further away is another S7 plane, an Airbus of the A320 family. Russian airlines have been adding new Boeing and Airbus planes that are progressively replacing the old soviet models.

We can also see 2 planes from Transaero, Russia's second international airline (the first is Aeroflot), a Boeing 767 (right) and a Boeing 747-200 Jumbo (left), two wide-body long range planes that probably transport Russian tourists to resorts in the Mediterranean, that are popular destinations from Domodedovo.
In the background there is a large number of parked planes and, although it is difficult to tell from this picture, they are mostly soviet-built. For example, just behind the tail of the S7 Airbus 310 there is an Ilushyn IL-96, the Russian equivalent to the Airbus 340, of relatively new design, but that has experienced some problems that have prevented it from selling in larger numbers.

In summary, quite an interesting mix, that is probably going to become more homogeneous, as Russian carriers update their fleets, but as the restructured Russian aircraft industry gets back to the market with new models, it might continue to be more diverse than in the West.