Juergen Witte

Well, that´s obviously the main goal to get their own hotel/resort customers in and out. Selling leftover seats is just an afterthought. ... and if those hotel/resort passengers already make sufficient revenue there´s no huge incentive to sell seats cheap. After all it is a premium product they offer and cost per seat mile is way higher compared to e.g. Firefly which has a much higher seat density.

I suspect JAL will transfer a few - primarily leisure - routes to Zipair Tokyo but I can see Zipair open other routes which JAL can´t serve sufficiently profitable (like JAL makes just a thin margin). They will even open new routes that JAL never considered before because these wouldn´t be profitable (with JAL´s high labour/production costs and expected relatively low average yield) under any circumstances So, Zipair Tokyo will be very much like AirCanada Rouge or Eurowings. After all Zipair Tokyo is primarily an attempt to lower production costs. I expect Zipair Tokyo to be kind of a hybrid carrier not fully LCC (like Air Asia (X) ) but also not full service. We´ll have to wait and see how much comfort/service for passengers will be stripped off in comparison to JAL.

I guess it is an unfortunate or incorrect using of the term "per". I´d expect they meant to show the distance between the airport and destination in the city in either actual road distance or time wise (distance per km and distance in hours/minutes) ...

Qatar Airways will serve Langkawi 4/7 from oct 15. as an extension of its Penang service. Initially served by A330-200 they will switch to B787-800 from oct 27. Planned schedule: QR866 DOH0155 – 1420PEN1540 – 1620LGK 788 x13 QR867 LGK1825 – 1905PEN2025 – 2330DOH 788 x13 I don´t know if they have traffic rights for the PEN-LGK sector. So, not sure if one can book it - I have doubts because it is a domestic sector wholly within Malaysia ...

Thanks for the update. But ... I don´t think this can be a long term solution since that means no ILS at all. Firefly and possible other potential airlines certainly want a high level of reliabilty for their OPS. So, another solution needs to be found. It should be possible to install just a single direction ILS that approaches from the opposite direction. So, I don´t see an issue aside from an approach over limited housing areas in Singapore - or is there a hill obstructing approach from that side ?

In that report is mentioned that Izham is exploring options to re-establish flights between Subang and Singapore "be it to Seletar or Changi". Could that hint to FY getting regional jets in order to circumvent the prop ban @ Changi ? I understand regulations @ Subang would have to be changed as well ... Maybe that would only be a last resort if all other talks with Singapore fail.

I stand corrected ... Of course it´s Israeli (citizenship) related - because Kuwait does not recognize Israel as a country. Btw. we had a similar "incident" here in Germany which involved an Israeli citizen having purchased a ticket from Germany via Kuwait to BKK on KU but was denied boarding. The court decided that although he basically had the right for compensation KU was effectively unable to fulfil the terms of contract. Ultimately no compensation was due because the passenger did not check in advance if he complies with entry requirements at intermediate transit points (Kuwait in this case) as this is the customers responsibility.

Correct. The last one to pull out was KU. Inofficiall reason: Because of a political/legal row over a passenger denied boarding because he is Jewish. KU is forced - by Kuwaiti law - to deny transportation of any Jewish passenger ... So, in order to avoid further serious legal trouble in US they decided to terminate the service altogether.

But how come Berjaya operated into XSP until switching to SIN in 2010 ? Regulations have not changed since ...

I´m pretty sure HY does not have (full) traffic rights for KUL-SIN vv. So, you can´t book that route Only Passengers with Tickets TAS-KUL/SIN can use these flights. They might even be allowed to make a stopover in KUL and use the HY flight KUL-SIN a week later. But no tickets can be sold on HY for KUL-SIN only.

TK generally gets quite a lot of feed from Western Europe but due to (IMHO serious) political trouble with the EU and because IST has reached a not so stellar reputation in recent times because of almost permanent congestion at IST they are loosing market share. That has obviously some impact on loads on IST-KUL as well ... It is something no-one can blame on the local IST-KUL market/demand. People seem to book (at least in part) on other airlines now.

You can expect fares are not only driven by demand but also by competitors fare levels. Revenue management of every airline keeps a close eye on what competitors are doing (e.g. raising/lowering fares not just related to load factor)

Well, at least in a German Airliners forum there´s a rumour that LH will return to KUL with northern winter schedule 2016/2017 or summer schedule 2017 with A 350-900 ...

BKK will soon get an interesting flight by Ural Air (U6). The airline will extend one of their twice weekly Ekaterinburg - Harbin flights to BKK with traffic rights on the Harbin-Bangkok sector. Schedule according to Airlineroute is: U6755 SVX 2045 – 0535+1 HRB 0700+1 – 1235+1BKK 320 6 U6756 BKK 0105 – 0745 HRB 0845 – 1235 SVX 320 7

Thanks for you reply. Makes me wonder what will happen to their Dash-7 and ATR72-500 and also whether there will be another operator to serve Tioman/Redang - eventually ...

Does anyone know if J8 still operates ? A friend was at SZB today (sunday) and no flights performed (aircraft inside their hangar or in front of it - so not at the terminal) and the office in the terminal was closed. According to their published schedule (on their website) sunday should see some J8 flights ... What happened ??? Ceased OPS ??? Anyone with insight ? I had tried myself to book a flight on J8 for september but gave up after their website did not show any availlability and neither emails nor phonecalls were responded to. What kind of business model is that

Ich melde mich ab means literally: "I report for signing off / out". It´s kind of a message typically used when someone is leaving a place. Can be used also e.g. at work when you tell your boss you are leaving the office for a longer period (e.g. being out for an extended period including vacation)

It´s not going to happen ... Air Asia is suspending all flights out of Clark (CRK) effective october 8 !

If you have no issue with a stay in the Schengen area then a sidetrip to Spain (PMI ...) would be a doable possibility. It´s even possible to do daytrips with DE between FRA and PMI. Usually DE leaves early in the morning and has a second rotation in the evening ...

You are right Mallorca is an Island. It´s the largest of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterrannean Sea (~ 200km SE of Barcelona) Condor operates the B 753 also to other spanish destinations (e.g. Malaga/AGP which is located on the south mainland coast) I suggested PMI because this destination gives you the greatest choice of flights (and airlines/aircraft) as it´s literally served from every "village airfield" across central/northern Europe ... (that makes it easy to combine with other destinations) Btw. Condor does not require roundtrip bookings so you might squeeze a DE one-way into an itinerary with the UK or Italy.

Condor´s B 757-300 are usually not used for long distance destinations (B753´s range is shorter than the B 752´s). That´s exclusive to their B 767-300ER´s. So, if you like to fly on them I can certainly help you find a reasonably priced flight on a B 757-300. E.g. FRA-PMI vv. is a hot route candidate because flight time is just about 2hrs and not too expensive if booked early enough. And Condor uses the 757 to PMI very frequent because of high pax volume to PMI. ... and PMI can be done easily as a daytrip which gives usually plenty of time for spotting at PMI (very early outbound FRA-PMI late inbound PMI-FRA of the second daily flight). Palma de Mallorca (PMI) generates an impressing amount of traffic - except in winter time ... I´m eager to help you find a Condor flight that suits you. Just PM me ! If you want to fly the B 757-200 then only Icelandair (FI) is a reliable possibility because charter operators (like Jet2 in the UK) are easily switching equipment. The problem is that flights to KEF are generally on the expensive side. FI´s main target are transit passengers from Europe to USA and vv. Local passengers from/to Iceland get charged an arm and a leg ! Other Options like Baltic (BT) use theirs on rather expensive or off-the-beaten-track destinations

Well, I didn´t look at it from this perspective ... Still, I don´t think ARN-BKK should be considered as a "regional" flight ! To give you a better idea of Norwegian Air Shuttle: Norwegian is somewhat comparable with Air Asia who runs separate companies in neighbouring countries (FD/QZ/PQ) but under the same brand. The difference with Norwegian is that DY purchased flyNordic in 2007 giving them access to the swedish domestic market. In the meantime Norwegian has fully integrated flyNordic OPS and has set up a major base in ARN. But all flights are run under a single AOC now. So, ARN-BKK is certainly 5th freedom but not really "regional".

Well, thanks for the update ! But don´t you think Norwegian´s BKK-ARN is stretching it a bit in terms of tag-ons ... ?

Well, I think it´s not such a bad idea ... On the domestic market Berjaya won´t be able to seriously compete against AK/MH/FY so the idea to go international makes sense. Be aware also that if they want to fly to the Philippines they will face harsh competition but there´s room for them if they stay outside of their competitors focus markets (mainly Manila and partly Clark that is). If Berjaya Air start KUL-CEB first (remember that MH pulled out of CEB a while ago and no direct competition is left there actually) and maybe KUL-DVO (Davao) they might "get a grip". This requires other aircraft than the current AT7 (forget the DH7 ...) - preferably regional jets - although the size of the AT7 would be just right. MASwings is talking about opening a Borneo - Philippines link for too long now and nothing has happened so far. That might be another opportunity for a start ...

Well, demand remains high in Y and C - the problem is low yields even in the forward cabin. The market Germany-Thailand is extremely competitive.