IAGblog Podcasts

Gueric Dechavanne, VP of Commercial Aviation Services at Collateral Verifications, raised interesting points on the CSeries and how disruptive it be to the aerospace industry. He sees the CSeries as most likely driving down the value of the A318/9 and 737-3/5/600 first. But clearly even among these models, the impact could be quite disruptive for operators and owners. The idea of re-engining programs comes up but Dechavanne does not see this as much of a threat.

We then go on to take a guess at likely targets for Bombardier and concur the CSeries may end up being a North American focused product - which does create other challenges for Bombardier.

Social media is all the rage at the moment. But the problems the travel industry, especially airlines, face are not new. So how, exactly, should the industry view social media as a solution to what is, essentially, old issues and problems? Sergio Mello, CEO and co-founder of Satisfly.com discusses how the industry needs to consider new technologies and tools in context. The problems may be old, but social media does mean a change of approach.

Ron Kuhlmann is a CAPA correspondent who just returned from the ACI meeting Kuala Lampur and shares his thought on airports - the perennial construction; the backwards and forwards of how this type of business runs given the vagaries of the airline business and being caught between communities that want air service everywhere for cheap, but don't want the noise. Its a tough business and it takes a special type of manager to deal with the politics on both sides of the business.

Sound like an over the top headline?  Well its not - check the math here. Air India just announced another blockbuster loss. The state says it will inject more capital. Surprise, surprise - as long as the airline remains state owned this transfer of wealth from the population to a select few will continue. And why do India's private airlines not yell at the top of their voices?  Great question - obviously they are taken care of - somehow. This is a truly sad state of affairs for Indians. It is a rotten situation.

The symbolism of a Titanic deckchair speaks for itself. The airline industry is shrinking into three mega-groups. But as these groups coalesce each airline not yet "affiliated" is either rapidly becoming an ugly duckling or something precious. Discussing the current batch of potential candidates for mergers is Ted Reed, airline columnist from TheStreet.com and Michael Ciasullo, IAG's managing partner for aviation consulting.

Today a thought piece was published by David Bentley, a principal with BigPondAviation.com. Southern Airlines’ Chairman, Si Xianmin, warned that emerging competition from China's expanding high-speed rail network is a “major challenge” for China's airlines. Mr Xianmin stated competition from high-speed trains is "already visible" and costing China Southern, Air China, China Eastern and other carriers market share on major routes where high-speed service is also available. According to Mr. Xianmin, traffic may fall by more than half on 518 of the carrier’s weekly services, while 38 of its 160 domestic routes will compete directly with high-speed railway lines.

This is amazing, since China is still developing and its airline industry is in early growth phase. To see such a rapid impact from high speed rail is unprecedented.

The decision was much anticipated but still came as a shock - Boeing's unions are angrier, and they were angry to start with. Jon Talton, Economy Columnist at The Seattle Times and Jon Ostrower from FlightGlobal are Boeing watchers and share their views of this news. The "blame game" has started and there is enough to share. Management at Boeing has to accept responsibility here but clearly the unions also helped to create the situation. Even the politicians in Washington state could have performed better.

There are so many firms that seem fearful of entering the field. But listen to emerging media diva and old school journalism veteran Benet Wilson explain why is nothing to fear. She even encourages people to make mistakes because there are no other schools to go to but the school of hard knocks. So no matter how big your firm, just give it a try.

In the airline business, if you don't make buckets of money in the summer then, historically, you run out of money in winter. But old models don't seem to apply anymore. Reviewing the third quarter US airline results we have George Hamlin and Doug Abbey; two veteran industry analysts. The discussion revolves around the relatively great results at Alaska - with obvious mention of Allegiant. The LCCs seem to be holding on better than network carriers. But the data speaks of a nasty winter as revenues simply cannot sustain the amount of seats.

As the economy remains slumped, few jobs could be more stressful than working at an airline. This is particularly true of those who wear uniforms. Bob Mann is a leading airline industry analyst and he explains how airline labor is going through the current economic slump. He points no everyone is having a rough time. We also discuss American's pilot union and its stand on JAL and open skies immunity for oneworld. Finally we discuss the real impact of flying hours and why pilots are bumping up maximum endurance - and perhaps this is why we are having the problems we are seeing.

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