UAE Spain open skies

UAE and Spain have signed an open skies agreement over the weekend which includes 5th freedom rights beyond Spain to the Americas for UAE based airlines. The designated airlines of both countries will be able to operate unlimited weekly passenger frequencies and capacity in each direction with any type of aircraft, as well as operate all cargo services.

Analysis :

For many months prior to this agreement being signed, EK was conducting a feasibility study on launching new DXB-BCN nonstop flights as well as future flights to Mexico City which would be routed via Spain as UAE too has an open skies agreement in place with Mexico. This became more serious in the summer when EK was conducting negotiations with few upscale Barcelona hotels for its cabin crew to stay in as well as for the EK Holidays division. With the open skies treaty being signed between UAE & Spain now, all options are available on the table for EK to pursue.

Currently QR only fly to Spain (Madrid) nonstop from the GCC and according to many, their flights are doing pretty ok. In Spain, MAD is the higher yielding market than BCN as its the political and financial capital of Spain hence there exists a bigger J & F class sized market segment here than in BCN. In Barcelona, the cargo potential for EK is huge as the city has a huge manufacturing and services industry which are booming.

In both Spanish cities, the main target market for EK would be transit traffic bound for the Far East (BKK/KUL/SIN), China, Japan, Australia and India. In the summer months, it shall definitely see high volume & high yielding traffic consisting of rich Arab families visiting their mansions on the Spanish peninsula.

Emirates airline

Emirates has officially revealed major changes to its Summer and Winter 2010 schedule especially with regards to realigning capacity on various routes across its medium haul and long haul network. The main highlights are as follows:

PER - capacity increased to double daily nonstop flights using a B 772LR effective Nov 1st.

DXB / KUL / MEL - capacity increased from daily A 345 to daily B 773ER effective July 1st.

MUC - capacity reduced from daily B 773ER + daily A 332 to daily A 345 + daily A 332 effective July 1st.

CMN - in flight product upgraded from daily A 343 to daily A 345 effective Aug 1st.

MEL - capacity increased to triple daily flights all using a B 773ER instead of 2 daily B 773ERs + daily A 345 effective Aug 1st.

LOS - in flight product upgraded with the 2nd daily flight being flight being operated by an A 345 along side the B 773ER which operates the other daily flight.

Emirates Air Line

A handout picture made available on October 26, 2008 from the media office of Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum shows Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Defence Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, walking through an aisle of the second Emirates Airline A380 superjumbo at Dubai international airport. The rich Gulf Emirate received the second A380 on October 24, 2008. Emirates, which is owned by the government of Dubai, is the largest customer of the A380. It has 58 on order in a deal worth about 18.8 billion dollars based on list prices.

The performance of Emirates Airline is an excellent guide to the underlying performance of business in Dubai. The airline is worth around $6 billion to the local economy. The announcement of record profits, up 62 per cent to $1.4 billion in the year to end of March, is a reflection both of the oil boom in the Gulf States and the dynamism of Dubai as a destination.

Emirates is also an extremely well managed airline, and now ranks among the top five most profitable in the world, giving the carrier an enviable ability to expand its fleet to become one of the world’s biggest long-haul carriers, perhaps one day the largest of them all.

For Emirates has a total of 182 aircraft on order costing $58 billion, including 58 of the giant new super jumbo A380s from Airbus. The global financial crisis has apparently had ‘no impact’ on funding this acquisition program, Gary Chapman, President of Group Services and Dnata told me this morning.

Emirates Airline has saved some 10 million litres of jet fuel and 772 hours of flight time since teaming with Air Services Australia to form a new route planning initiative five years ago.