Russian airline liveries: Yamal Airlines ("Ямал")

With not much going on in the Russian airline industry since my latest round-up, I thought it was a good opportunity to go for a more visual type of post and share some of the original airline liveries I have come across while in Russia.

So here is the first one, spotted at Domodedovo airport, Yamal Airlines ("Ямал"), an airline that takes its name from a frozen peninsula in Russia's far North, although most of its routes now are centered on other regions, such as the Siberian oil region of Tyumen or the, somewhat warmer, Anapa, on Russia's Black Sea Coast.

A Yamal Airlines Boeing 737-500

Plain and simple, I don't know whether it was intentional or not but I can't stop thinking that there is a point of "retro-ness" in this livery that makes it quite cool.

Do you agree?

App in the Air, improving the global traveler experience, one app at a time

Flying is one of those experiences that can be at the same time exciting in a positive way, particularly if you are an aviation enthusiast, but at the same time exhausting and exasperating because of all the procedures involved (getting to and from the airport, waiting times, delays, etc.). The availability of connected mobile devices, and particularly tablets, has done done a lot to alleviate and improve the air traveler experience either on land or on board.

It is reviewing this type of apps and sites that from time to time I come across a true gem, this is the case of my latest discovery during my stay in Moscow:

App in the Air, an application (for now available on iPhone) that aims to make the most of your flight experience.

In short: App in the Air provides you a tool kit to manage your plane trips, you can  track your flight status (check-in, boarding, gate/terminal information, delays), get tips about the airports you are flying through (where to eat, how to connect to Wi-Fi, etc.) and chat with other passengers (to share taxi from airport or find out whether security line is long and you should arrive at the airport in advance) and, in line with the "quantified-self" trend lets you keep organized records of all your flying activity.

Of course you can get this type of information through other apps and sites, but what I think makes App in the Air stand out is the nice and functional way in which all these practical features have been combined. Plus in addition to an elegant interface it has some nice details, such as notifications when there is just a certain amount of time left before check in or boarding.

I played with the app for a little while and as I liked what I saw I took advantage of the fact that I was in Moscow to meet with Bayram Annakov, of the team that developed it. What follows is a short interview with him:

Q: How did App in the Air start? What's been your story so far?

Bayram: It all started with a geo-location chat Squeek which we developed in 2011. After we launched it we've found out that our primary user base are chatting in airport rooms, so we decided to focus on this particular segment and make an app for them. This is how App in the Air was born. We raised $150K investment from the Russian venture capital fund imi.vc in August 2011 and launched the app in June 2012. 

Q: Who is  behind App in the Air?

B: Currently, we have a team of four: Sergey Pronin, our genius programmer who is coding on different languages and platforms and is responsible for the whole development; Nikita Kosholkin, our business analyst, who spends most of his time analyzing user behaviour, measuring the effectiveness of product changes and proposing new ones, Kirill Zorenkov, our Designer who is all about making the user experience as smooth as possible, and me, Bayram Annakov, responsible for product management and business development, but sometimes coding together with Sergey.

Q: What are your main markets?

B: Business & leisure flight travelers in English-speaking countries who have iPhones are our primary markets, though we plan to expand to new geographies (Asia - 5 times growth for the last 10 years) and to new platforms (Windows Phone and Android).

Q: How's been the market and user reception so far?

B: We have launched the app in June, 2012 - since that time we have 60 000 downloads (January, 2013), we got featured by the media: we are among Business Insider's 100 Greatest Apps and also Gizmodo UK Essential Apps of June to name a few... 

Q: Any anecdotes you might wish to share?

B: Do you know the most popular tip for Chicago Airport? "Don't forget your son Kevin at home. He'll most likely have to fend off burglars on his own." (a reference to the Home Alone movie!). 

Another one is that we had a user who made 90 flights in last four months (almost 1 flight a day!) and helped us find a bug that we hadn't even thought about. We decided to release a special "Limited Edition" version for him with a special badge on app icon to show our gratitude for all his help! :) 

Q: What is your long term vision for your project?

B: We want to be #1 source of official & unofficial information for every traveler to make his/her experience less stressful. We want to achieve it by flight alerts, tips & chat (users can actualy send questions via live chat to the App in the Air team) and by crowd-sourcing flight information from our users in addition to using official sources of flight information. 

We want to be the ultimate App in the Air.. and before the air! :)

Spinning-off

And indeed, the future looks promising, riding the wave of success the App in the Air team is preparing to branch out and develop some of their most popular features into stand-alone apps for all those travelers that don't need a comprehensive travel management tool but are looking to sort out only specific parts of their travel experience...stay tuned because we'll revisit App in the Air in the near future for sure...!

Iberia, Vueling and IAG (continued...)

By the way, to clarify, my previous article was motivated by this piece on the FT that points towards IAG using Vueling to cover most of Iberia's short-haul network...

It makes sense on paper, but Iberia's unions have an agreement with the company that prevents Vueling from flying little more than a few routes out of Madrid...this adds to an already very tense labour situation at the Spanish flag carrier.

Vueling taking over Iberia's network?...not so easy...

  Too close for comfort

The more details that emerge of IAG's plans for Iberia, the closer we get to the scenario anticipated in this blog a few months ago (and see also this other post).

Why create a low cost carrier from scratch when you already have one in-house?

It would make sense for IAG (and British Airways) to roll out the Vueling brand across all of Iberia's short haul network...but it won't be easy: there are labour agreements in place whose purpose is to prevent exactly this from happening...so brace for more industrial turbulence on its way!

(Translation: I would check the industrial action calendar before booking any flight with Iberia in the coming months!)

Air Lituanica, the new Lithuanian flag carrier: an answer to Vilnius connectivity problem?

While I recently wondered whether Vilnius, Lithuania, was still the European capital with the worst air connections some people where at work to prove me wrong...because Vilnius (and Lithuania) may soon have a new flag carrier: airLituanica (I am actually not sure whether I should write it like this, "airBaltic-style" in small caps, or as two words, "Air Lituanica", as the airline name appears written both ways throughout the presentation)

One interesting aspect of this new airline project for Lithuania is that there is a whole presentation about the project on slideshare (with date as of September 2012), that you can see here (part of it is in Lithuanian, a language that I, unfortunately, do not master, but there is also a section in English)

Air Lituanica pristatymas from Vilniaus miesto savivaldybė / Vilnius City Municipality

It looks like the new Lithuanian airline will start operating at some point in early 2013 with an initial fleet of two Embraer E-175 (to be increased to 4 in 2015) and routes to Amsterdam, London Gatwick, Brussels, Moscow Vnukovo and Kiev, in addition to the domestic destination of Palanga, on the Baltic coast. This network would later be expanded to include cities such as Stockholm and Munich and more.

(By the way: given that it is clearly stated that the fleet is going to be exclusively made of Embraers E-175s it would add credibility if future presentations would be illustrated with pictures of this aircraft type, rather than a mix of Boeing 737s and Airbus A320 that can be found on this one!)

The business model is defined as "low cost plus" which I assume to be another name for a "hybrid carrier", of the sort of Vueling or Air Berlin.

My first thoughts when reading about the project is that it is a going to be an easy ride, with a relatively small home market and airBaltic, Wizz Air and Ryanair with well-established networks in the region. Plus the fact that airLituanica is being kick-started by the city of Vilnius makes me, inevitably, think of Spanair, another airline that was supported from public institutions with the idea of fulfilling a "strategic" connectivity role for the city it served.

From the information found in the presentation above, it looks like the new carrier has got some very experienced advisors, though, such as London-based Aviation Economics, so we'll give it a vote of confidence after all...while we wait and see whether it is able to carve out a niche market for itself in this difficult market.

A list of really cool sites for frequent fliers

From time to time I like to share some aviation-related sites or apps I have come across...and, while the jury is still out as to the success of social seating apps that some airlines hve been launching recently, other startups are focusing on sorting other types of problems, such as refining flight search results...

Yes, I know this is hardly new, there are tons of flight searching engines out there, however most search result pages remain incredibly dull...

Hipmunk has devised a very visual flight search results page and has also included the concept of "agony search" to the mix, that means that their algortithms take into account the inconvenience caused by stopovers and total travel time and has wrapped this up in a fresh, visually-appealing interface.

With this system you can get the equivalent of a flight options "visual map" and even hide or display several flight combinations from the same airline. I must say, I have not tested whether the effectiveness of Hipmunk's system when it comes to finding the best prices, I really hope it matches its user-friendliness!

A snapshot of Hipmunk's visual flight search, here showing results for a London to Melbourne flight

Not all flights are equal and often it is the small details that make all the difference, but flight search engines do not provide much in depth information about the sort of amenities you can expect in a flight. This is precisely what Routehappy is aiming to fix. This startup, whose site is currently in beta, gives you flight options based on a rating of passenger experience. It not only integrates reviews from fellow passengers but it also provides information about amenities such as in-flight wi-fi or meals, an information that I am sure many passengers would find useful when comparing between different flight options.

Last but not least, another cool airline-related site that I have discovered and that I am sure many frequent fliers and aviation enthusiasts (I am counting myself in!) will enjoy. The idea of having a flight log where you keep track of all your flying is not exactly new, but what I really liked of Flightdiary is its cool, map-based interface that integrates all sort of statistics about your travel activity. Great design that makes of Flightdiary an extremely user-friendly and enjoyable site.

Best aviation and airline books for the summer

Many of us take advantage of the summer holidays to slow down a bit and catch up with readings. Although it is not the most prolific literary genre out there, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a short list of books about the airline business that I have enjoyed and can recommend.

I actually have a longer list of aviation and airline books I would like to read as soon as I find the time, so hopefully I will be able to update this list soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one!

 
1) Flying Off Course: Airline economics and marketing, 4th Edition
by Rigas Doganis

This is the latest, updated, edition of what is, by all accounts, the book I would recommend for anyone willing to understand the basics of the airline business. If you know of any other book that fulfills this mission better, please let me know!

Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe
by Siobhan Creaton

This is a short book that explains the roots of Ryanair, the role of Michael O'Leary in completely revamping the business model of what used to be a struggling small Irish airline to make it Europe's low cost champion. Besides the purely airline-related part of the story, it also provides a vivid picture of the personality of the Irish airline's larger-than-life CEO.

EasyJet: The Story of Britain's Biggest Low-cost Airline
by Lois Jones

This book is similar to the previous one, although maybe less focused on the caracther of Stelios than the Ryanair book is about O'Leary. It makes an interesting read not only for aviation enthusiasts but also for anyone interested in reading case studies of how marketing and operational innovation can disrupt industries.

Overall I must say that, although these books are a nice read, I was expecting to find many more high quality books about such a fascinating industry. If you have any suggestions, do not hesitate to share them here!

Bringing the Olympic spirit to the airline industry

The Olympic Games are a global event and therefore, the link with the airline industry is unavoidable. So I thought it could be a good idea to compile a list of the airline and aviation-related news, stories and images that the 2012 London Olympics are generating.

For a start, the queues at Heathrow and other London airports, a major concern for both the authorities and air travelers that were expecting (even more) chaos...the big news, however, is that...there are no news! All seems to be working, even better than normal!

Whereas one million extra visitors are expected in London during the Olympic period (let me doubt about these figures!), some UK-based airlines seem less than enthusiastic about the extra business they might bring them: Easyjet does not expect the Games to have a positive impact on its bottom line, whereas British Airways expects a drop in business (high-yield) passengers.

Not sure why they complain, since it was BA itself that was encouraging Britons to stay at home and support Team GB. Its "Home Advantage" campaign included a cool game that allows you to direct a one of BA's Boeing 777s to your home address by making it taxi through the London streets.



In any case, British Airways is fully embracing its role as one of the Olympic sponsors and has unveiled a number of original Olympics-themed liveries to be displayed on some of its A319 aircraft in the run up to the Games, starting with the Dove, and continuing with the Firefly, painted on the plane that brough the Olympic flame from Greece to the UK.

But BA is not the only airline that is repainting its aircraft for the occasion, Qantas, JAL, ANA, LOT and South African Airways have also painted their planes in Olympic liveries.

Qantas Olympic livery for London 2012
Image: Gabriel Tam (under Creative Commons License)

More controversial were the news that, on the flight to London, Japan's delegations reserved business class seats for their male footballers, while their female colleagues had to travel in economy.

This won't be a problem for the Jordanian team, since the entire delegation will fly low cost carrier Easyjet to the London Olympics, taking advantage of the orange airline route linking Amman to London.

And, in case, you need to fly during the Olympics and risk missing any of your favourite sports, Gulf Air is going to provide live streaming coverage of the Games.

What seems to be  totally off the programme, despite some speculation, is a comeback of the Concorde during the Games...although you can always try to get this replica of the Concorde in London 2012 Olympic livery!

UPDATE: more on aircraft storage

UPDATE: following my recent post about Spanair and Malev aircraft paying up to €2,500 for temporary storage at Irish airport, I got a message from Pablo, a reader of this blog, letting me know that it is cheaper to park aircraft at Palma de Mallorca airport (PMI).

So, all airlines expecting to go bankrupt in the coming months, please take note!

More ways to follow Allplane

This is kind of a service announcement, but I would like to share with you the new platforms where I am posting airline and aviation-related content.

You will see that the web is getting visual and that it is seems that it is all about social curation now...the great advantage of these platforms is that they are all interconnected, so they are great complements of this blog and allow me to share my content in new ways as well as uncover some great aviation-related content produced by other aviation enthusiasts out there.

If you like what I post on this blog, then I suggest you follow me also on:

Pinterest
A great enjoyable way to share all sort of aviation pictures

Tumblr
A new way to share content, very visual and with a point of randomness

Scoop.it
This platform allows you to share stories and content in a similar way to what Pinterest allows you to do with images

And, of course, Allplane is on Twitter, Facebook and Google+  too!

Airlines and postal services, still getting along well

The association between airlines and postal services dates back to the very early times of aviation. In fact, many pioneering airlines started to carry mail and, only later, started to carry passenger...Some air postal routes became icons of an era, such as the famous Aéropostale, running between Toulouse and Dakar, with stopovers in Barcelona and Casablanca....

Although airplanes have continued to feature prominently in air mail stamp issues in many countries, the two industries have followed diverging paths, though, as "paper" mail has gone into decline, the number of air passengers worldwide has only gone up.

 This is why I really liked these stamps that have been issued by the French postal service, La Poste, to celebrate the start of the new Volotea service between Venice and Bordeaux.

As it happens, La Poste has a service that allows you to order customized stamps with images of your choice, Bordeaux airport has the tradition of ordering a set of stamps to celebrate each new route that starts at the airport.

Have you seen other air route stamps?

Could history become a new source of ancillary revenue for airlines?

A few days ago a friend of mine mentioned that, after several years, he had flown again on an aircraft that he knew well from a previous stint in the airline industry. I checked the registration details of the aircraft in question and found out that I had also flown on that plane in the past, only that when it belonged to another airline and had a different name.

So the following idea came to my mind, given the rush to get more and more ancillary revenue, why don’t airlines create a list of famous or important people that have flown on a given aircraft, even on a particular seat, and “market” this experience to the public?

Time to add some plates to aircraft seats too?

The same way that some old houses have historical plates that recall the people that have lived in them, why not airplanes?... well, to be fair, I see a major obstacle with this: whereas age might be perceived as a positive attribute in a house (because a long history might give it its character), it might have quite negative connotations when applied to what is, after all, a flying machine (old equipment!).

Nevertheless, you do not need to go back that many years, there are plenty of contemporary icons that could serve this purpose well (football players, artists, celebrities). Airlines would just need to take care not to highlight these "celebrity seats" past a certain amount of time, and keep renovating them...Anyone willing to pay extra to seat on the same seat that your favourite sportsman sat on when flying to that important match? Judging by the video below, maybe Turkish Airlines is well positioned to do it...

Highlights of the annual Airneth conference (III): "the airline industry is structurally unstable"

The title of this post refers to the words of Rigas Doganis, author of Flying Off Course, possibly the most-read book on the airline industry to date (a revised and updated fourth edition that has just been released!)


Flying Off Course is the reference book about the airline industry

Mr.Doganis was one of the speakers at the Airneth conference and there he outlined his vision of the future of the airline industry. A future that passes necessarily through further consolidation, something that will have serious implications for several European hubs.

• The largest network airlines (all 9 largest airlines by capacity all had losses last year!) will focus on long-haul operations at large hubs and contract out the feeder services

• Smaller regional airlines will focus on their niche business-oriented traffic

• Mid-sized traditional network carriers have a bleak future ahead!

• Low cost carriers will increase their dominance of short haul European routes and will see some additional consolidation until only 3 or 4 will be left (Michael O'Leary has also been anticipating such an scenario, although he does not spare any fellow low cost carrier!).

• Charter airlines will have to concentrate on long-haul leisure destinations as the LCCs take more of the short-haul holiday market.

Next, it was the turn of Nigel Dennis, of the University of Westminster Transport Studies Group, that presented a fascinating analysis of the different levels of competition each major airline alliance is facing at its own hub and presented some evidence of how this is affecting pricing on key routes (Easyjet competing on a given route could result in flag-carrier prices up to three times higher!). When comparing the competitive position of the three main airline alliances, it turned out that Oneworld, and in particular, IAG (that includes both British Airways and Iberia) is under much stronger pressure from low cost carrier at its own hubs (London and Madrid) than its counterparts at Star Alliance and SkyTeam.

This is something that was also noted by Jan Veldhuis, of The Netherlands Institute for Policy Analysis (KiM), in his presentation, as he remarked that, whereas Skyteam has increased its dominance at both CDG and AMS, Oneworld is loosening its grip on LHR.

And low cost carriers have often been mentioned throughout the conference...but, how do you define a low cost carrier?

Richard Klophaus presented a method to evaluate how "low cost" a carrier is, based on a set of 14 criteria, such as fleet homogeneity or use of major airports. Although he admitted the algorithm might need some refinement it provided an objective way to classify different airlines and the results were not always coincident with popular perception or even the airline's own marketing message. for example in a scale of 0 (no low cost) to 1 (pure low cost airline), Ryanair scored 1, whereas airlines traditionally that market themselves as "low cost", such as Vueling or Aer Lingus got 0.53, which means that they are, in reality half-way between a low cost airline and a network carrier.


Aer Lingus: not as low cost as it pretends...

Highlights of the annual Airneth conference (II): analyzing the Delta-Norwest merger

As I anticipated in my previous post, the annual Airneth conference was a very interesting opportunity to listen to major airline industry experts and learn first-hand how they envisage the future of the airline business. The following is not an exhaustive account of the conference, but only some highlights I picked up that I hope will be of interest to readers of this blog, that I assume share with me their interest and passion for the commercial aviation industry.

Shortly after the usual introductory words, the conference kicked-off with Perry Cantarutti, senior VP at Delta airlines, explaining his experience of the recent merger between Delta (DAL) and Northwest Airlines (NWA).

He highlighted how DAL and NWA could extract significant value out of their very complementary networks and fleets: Delta had a strong network in the South and East of the US as well as a large transatlantic presence, whereas Northwest was strong in the upper-Midwest and the Pacific. Similarly, NWA had a fleet with lots of small (and I would add quite old too!) aircraft, such as DC-9s and also very large ones (B747s), whereas DAL had many mid-sized aircraft (B737s and B767s). So, the merger allowed them to rationalize fleet use and frequencies, for example deploying A320s at SLC to fly routes to the East coast, whereas shorter-range MD-90s are used at MSP to fly shorter sectors.

The resulting airline is now #1 (in average seat miles capacity) domestically in the US and in the US to Europe, Africa and Asia and #2 in the US to Latin America market. Although, when analyzing the competitive situation on transatlantic routes, it might be more accurate to consider capacity by alliances rather than individual airlines, and here DAL-NWA benefit from an increasing cooperation with AF-KLM and Alitalia, to the point that Skyteam now has a share of 27% of transatlantic capacity, just 1% below the largest alliance (Star Alliance).

Skyteam partners have already achieved a significant amount of integration in areas such as joint revenue management on transatlantic routes and we can deduct, from Mr.Cantarutti's words, that we are going to see increasing integration within Skyteam, for example, by looking for more commonalities in aircraft cabins.

Highlights of the annual Airneth Conference in The Hague (I): Consolidation and new business models in the air transport industry

The Hague: an excellent choice to host the annual Airneth conference

Last week I had the opportunity to attend what is possibly one of the most interesting aviation-related events in Europe right now: the annual Airneth conference in The Hague, The Netherlands.

The line-up of speakers sounded impressive beforehand, it included professionals of the caliber of Rigas Doganis, of "Flying-off Course" fame, but after attending most of the sessions I can just say that the conference totally exceeded my expectations. In addition to the quality of the debate that went on in the conference room, I must congratulate the organizers for the perfect set up (as well as the choice of city!).

Given that the conference was being held in The Netherlands, the case of Schiphol airport deserved some special attention, with its symbiotic relationship with KLM, of outmost importance for the Dutch economy. I could detect some concern among the attendees about the survival of Schiphol as a major hub in the constantly-changing airline industry scene, something of particular relevance now, with KLM as a junior member of the Air France group, the industry's centre of gravity shifting eastwards and a growing market share for low cost carriers...

In coming blog posts I will try to summarize my impressions of the conference and outline some of the major topics that centered the discussion, some of which are much in line with what I have usually been writing about in this blog: the future of competition between network airlines and low cost carriers, evolving business models in the airline industry, airport de-hubbing and re-hubbing, airline alliances and route development.

Watch this space!