Aeroflot launched (13-May-2021) a dedicated coronavirus vaccination incentive programme for staff members, including flight crew and cabin crew. Under the programme, each fully vaccinated employee receives one additional paid vacation day. [more - original PR - English/Russian]
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Travelport NDC Leadership Council shares industry-wide consensus on NDC servicing requirements12-May-2021
Travelport NDC Leadership Council shares industry-wide consensus on NDC servicing requirements
The NDC (New Distribution Capability) servicing features that are critical to achieving NDC at scale are those than enable refunds and the management of customer and airline-initiated changes, according to new research by the Travelport hosted NDC Leadership Council.
The NDC Leadership Council was formed by Travelport in 2019 to facilitate the industry-wide collaboration required to ensure NDC’s success. It has a geographically diverse group of participating airlines, agencies and corporate travel managers and providers from companies including American Airlines, Qantas, United Airlines, American Express Global Business Travel, AmTrav, dnata Travel, and UBS.
To conduct the study, members of the NDC Leadership Council individually prioritised a selection of 18 discrete servicing features and then, separately, identified the capabilities that have potential to slow progress if they are not supported, which it called ‘blockers’. The results revealed six of the servicing capabilities to be both key priorities and blockers, and hence, considered by the Council to be mandatory for the success of NDC’s rollout. These were:
The results showed strong consensus between agency and airline participants on the six priority capabilities. However, demand for ‘pay using 3D-Secure’, ‘adding an ancillary’ and ‘seat selection’ capabilities was considerably higher among airlines and corporate travel providers. ‘Order history’ was also shown to be in high demand among travel agencies.
“We’ve been delivering NDC for several years and engage our customers at every step of the roll out process to continually improve the NDC shopping, selling, and servicing process” said Kyle Moore, Global Head of Customer Strategy at Travelport. “This detailed research into the priority servicing needs for NDC validates the direction that we have taken to-date. It also highlights the fact that key functionality is in place and that we are now focused on situation-specific features. To that end, we are working with both our airline partners to enable their NDC programs and our agency customers to integrate NDC content into their workflows.”
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Allegiant Air’s business model shines during the pandemicEven before the COVID-19 pandemic, Allegiant Air had a highly defensible business model, reflected in many years of its stock trading in the triple digits before the crisis struck. Now the company is rightfully boasting that it could be the first US operator to recover fully, and its market cap has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
It remains an unknown just how the US landscape will evolve post pandemic. But Allegiant’s ability to recover faster than some of the country’s other airlines, and its cost structure combined with an overall still smaller footprint, will continue to be catalysts for the airline as it joins other airlines in capitalising on an inflection point in US demand.
Talking at the CAPA Live on 14-Apr-2021, Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce spoke with CAPA’s chairman emeritus Peter Harbison.
Some the key quotes from the following verbatim report:
- "We're planning on being 80% (capacity) or above for the last quarter."
- “We are seeing that the demand yields hold up pretty well, but we have been out there stimulating the market."
- "International is burning around 5 million a week."
- "We've won nearly 30 corporate accounts in the last few months."
- "Jetstar should be out of COVID a lot bigger than it was going into COVID."
- "When the Qantas group plays its best game it always wins."
- "We're also seeing the corporate market, the business market, not being as impacted as other markets around the globe."
- "Internationally we don’t think we’ll get back to 2019 levels until 2024."
- "To travel (internationally), you either need to do quarantine or you need to be vaccinated."
- "I think that the 2020’s big strategic move for us is going to be (Project) Sunrise."
The Vietnamese government has estimated that following a rapid pre-pandemic rise in passenger numbers, the requirement for airport infrastructure during the next five years will be twice what it was in the past five years.
Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) reports that VND25 trillion (USD1 billion) has been invested in expanding airport infrastructure over the past five years to support passenger and cargo growth, but that it will need approximately VND120 trillion (USD5.2 billion) from 2021 to 2025 to complete infrastructure projects.
Vietnam's passenger and cargo traffic increased by an average of 17% and 13% respectively from 2012 to 2019.
However, there are questions about the selection of infrastructure projects, their geography, and whether traffic forecasts have been exaggerated.
Of greater concern still is the lingering question of where the finance and the operating experience will come from.
In President Biden's address to Congress in he very briefly mentioned airports, but not within any context that suggests they are high on his government's list of priorities. They will get a comparatively miniscule USD25 billion from the infrastructure fund over eight years.
A bipartisan movement, however, is supportive of increasing the passenger facility (user) charge, which would help improve finances and perhaps even build some new infrastructure, but the people who can really help, in the private sector, are not 'party to the conversation'.
Several airports have just recently announced the continuation or implementation of infrastructure schemes though, which suggests there is still life left in the concept, and some of those schemes do involve the private sector by way of ‘P3’ deals.
At a time when the aviation industry is searching for up-to-the-minute market intelligence, news, trend analysis and thought leadership, CAPA - Centre for Aviation delivers a virtual “Summit” on the second Wednesday of each month, jam-packed with information, data and live interviews. CAPA experts, global airline CEOs and other cutting-edge industry leaders present live from a next-gen virtual event platform.
The most recent CAPA Live event was on 12-May-2021, and featured the below speakers. Find out more
Margy Osmond
CEO, TTF
Dr. Benson Tang
Executive Director, CTC - Corporate Travel Community
Subhas Menon
Director General, AAPA
Chris Youlten
Executive Director Operations Strategy, Etihad Airways
Andrew Watterson
EVP & Chief Commercial Officer, Southwest Airlines
Recorded at CAPA Live April
Corporate Travel Community Welcome & Outlook
The global and regional outlook for corporate travel is extremely challenging. Hear the latest trends and analysis from our expert presenter.
CAPA Live is the most sought-after monthly global aviation event. Taking place on the second Wednesday of each month, thousands of industry colleagues from across the globe tune in for their monthly dose of aviation and travel news, analysis, and in-depth interviews with industry leaders. Register here to be part of our growing community.
CAPA - Centre for Aviation stated (13-May-2021) Emirates Airline received one new A380-800 aircraft (A6-EVP, MSN 269) as recorded by the CAPA Fleet Database. The airline now operates 119 A380s with four remaining on order.
Geneva Airport reported (12-May-2021) the following traffic highlights for Apr-2021:
- Passengers: 191,216, -87.5% compared to Apr-2019;
- Cargo: 4841 tons, -28.2%;
- Aircraft movements: 5536, -63.9%. [more - original PR]
Manchester Airports Group reported (13-May-2021) passenger numbers at Manchester Airport, London Stansted Airport and East Midlands Airport for Apr-2021:
- Passengers: 166,849, -96.8% compared to Apr-2019;
- Manchester: 82,218, -96.6%;
- London Stansted: 84,553, -96.5%;
- East Midlands: 78, -99.9%. [more - original PR]
IndiGo partnered with Columbia Asia Hospital in Gurgaon to establish a 13 bed COVID-19 care centre for its personnel and their immediate family members (Economic Times/Live Mint/Daily Pioneer, 13/14-May-2021). The LCC stated the facility "is being set-up to help those COVID-19 positive employees who may need access to an oxygen bed with related medical facilities".
Luxair reported (10-May-2021) the following traffic highlights for the 12 months ended 31-Dec-2020:
- Passengers: 658,873, -69% year-on-year;
- Passenger load factor: 58.4%, -14.6pp;
- Cargo: 947,247 tonnes, +6.1%. [more - original PR]
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