More on Barcelona's empty airport terminal

Foto: an evening at BCN's T2

When I mentioned a few weeks ago that the recent inauguration of Barcelona's T1 terminal had left the old terminals empty, well... I really meant it! I was there a few days ago and it was almost sad, not to say surreal to walk along the deserted aisles.

An ancient name for a very modern aiport

In a previous post I commented on the inauguration of the new Lleida-Alguaire airport. One aspect of this new infrastructure that I think deserves a comment on its own is the choice of IATA code.

At first glance one might thought the obvious choices to be:

LLE or LED for Lleida, but these correspond to Malelane (South Africa) and Pulkovo (St.Petersburg, Russia)

maybe adding "Alguaire" to the code but this gives us:

LAG is taken by LaGuardia airport in NYC, LLA to Lulea in Sweden, LAL to Lakeland, FL.

so the winner was: ILD!

what does ILD stand for?

"Ilerda", the roman name of the city of Lleida, that also happen to be the location of one of the battles of the Roman Civil War between Julius Caesar and Pompey....in 49BC!


Foto: Julius Caesar, from Wikipedia

Aviation has, thus led this ancient name to a modern revival...!

What happens when a major airport loses all of its traffic overnight?

Foto by Flickr user Berto Garcia under a Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License.

Last week I landed at the old terminal (T2) of Barcelona airport for the first time since the new terminal (T1) became operational at the end of last summer. Both terminals are actually part of the same airport (BCN), but they are physically separated, and they actually look like two separate airports, with the new terminal duplicating the capacity of the old one (see this story I wrote a few months ago)...and this is the problem! All three major airline alliances have moved to the new terminal, and the old one, that used to handle over 30 million passengers a year, is now virtually empty...well, not totally, a handful of airlines, with Easyjet and Air Berlin the largest of them, and some charter flights still use it, but the drop has been dramatic (the night that I landed, my Easyjet flight was the only one on sight). This is not totally bad for the passenger, that can enjoy plenty of space and no hassle, but it must have required a strong readjustment to the many shops and businesses that used to operate (or that still are) in the old terminal, and, most important of all, it sets a challenge upon the airport managers to find new traffic to fill the void.

Is Ryanair the solution?


Foto by Flickr user Andy_Mitchell_UK under a Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License.

The Irish airline has been quick to grab some of the extra available capacity and it has already announced its landing at BCN. Ryanair has already proven it can do well in the Catalan market, that already hosts two of its bases (Girona and Reus), both within one hour drive of Barcelona and I have no doubts that it will also do well in BCN. The airport authorities deny that Ryanair will enjoy any discount on its operating fees (a previous request that the Irish airline seems to have finally dropped), but one of the concerns remain: will Ryanair grab market-share up to the point where BCN becomes, over the long term, a Ryanair-dominated airport? this thought surely worries all those local stakeholders that over recent years have been working to make Barcelona a real contender in the European aviation scene (the lack of intercontinental routes is still BCN's main weakness). A precedent exists and it is positive, Ryanair also moved to take spare capacity after the T-4 terminal at Madrid-Barajas was inaugurated and its presence in that airport has contributed to a more competitive scenario that has benefited travelers. However, it must be said that whereas Madrid could count with the solid presence of Iberia as the dominant carrier, the situation at BCN is a bit more volatile, and the situation of the two main carriers currently operating out of BCN, Spanair in the full-service segment and Vueling as low-cost, looks (at least on paper) a bit more fragile...They have reasons to worry when seeing Ryanair at the gates...

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...!

What airlines go for an all wide-body fleet?

Photo: Japan Airlines Boeing 747 taking off, by Yamaguchi Yoshiaki from Japan under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.

The typical European or American network carrier has a mix of narrow and wide-body aircraft. The goal is to serve an heterogeneous mix of destinations, long and short haul, that have different densities of traffic. However, there are a few major airlines in the world that have opted for the all wide-body, long haul fleet. In what is their model different with respect to the mixed fleet carriers?

The only European one of the lot, Virgin Atlantic, is a rare bird, it is not a network carrier, but a long haul point to point carrier. It is remarkable that, although it has a network of partner airlines, Virgin Atlantic does not have feeder operations of its own. It is difficult to think of a city other than London that could currently generate enough international traffic to support such business model. Singapore? Dubai? Well, these are different stories...Singapore Airlines and Emirates are actually network carriers, we could call them global network carriers, because, whereas most European network carriers operate a short-haul to long-haul network, these two airlines operate primarily a long-haul to long-haul one, connecting people across continents. A wide-body fleet is a necessity for them, and although they also fly to some destinations that are close to their bases, the savings that arise from having a more homogeneous fleet probably more than compensate for having a long-range plane making short hops. This business model has got a tremendous impulse with the increase in global commerce and international traffic of the last decade, and other airlines, particularly in the Gulf have also gone this way (Etihad of Abu Dhabi, Qatar Airways,...). Building such an intercontinental network requires a huge capital investment (a brand new Airbus A380 can cost up to $275M)...and then you need to fill lots of seats! so it shouldn't come as a surprise that most of the airlines following this model have been set up by investors with deep pockets for whom building a hub is part of a grander economic and financial strategy for their respective territories.

And now we turn our attention to Japan, because to the European observer it is simply amazing to see an entire fleet of jumbos serving only the domestic market. Japan is not a huge country in terms of landmass and it is also well served by an efficient high speed rail network...high population density must have been the main reason behind the fact that some short domestic routes in Japan being served by Boeing 747s, that in other parts of the world would be reserved for the densest long-haul routes. If capacity (some Japanese jumbos can carry up to 550 passengers) is the main factor, why then this model has not been adopted elsewhere in high density routes, for example in China or India or in the busiest European and American routes (London-Amsterdam, Barcelona-Madrid, NY-LA)? Also, and surprisingly enough, no Japanese airline seems to have shown interest in the A380, maybe it has to do with the critical financial situation of Japan Airlines? or with Japanese airlines having a historical preference for Boeing?

The cabin design revolution

First it was the news that Ryanair and the Chinese airline Spring Airlines were evaluating the use of a sort of "bar stools" in their planes, in order to optimize space use in their aircraft. We can give credit to Ryanair for implementing bold ideas, so we might find them in the planes sooner than many think...but in the meantime other proposals for new cabin lay-outs are coming up. In this article you can see Design Q's idea of short-haul flying. I personally do not like the fact that you would be seating with the window at your back. I know many people do not care about having a window seat but I am probably not alone in finding that watching through the window one of the highlights of any flight, specially when arriving for the first time to certain country or city. This would still be possible with this proposed layout, but I have the impression it will be considerably more uncomfortable than in the classical layout, for example one of the weak points of the, otherwise outstanding, Virgin Upper Class is that the seats are also giving their back to the window, so anyone willing to look through the window must make formidable contortions or resign himself to follow the flight path in the video guide. In any case, and for those interested in this topic, I recommend this interesting New York Times article from 2006.

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.