Frontier recently jolted the US airline industry by issuing a press release that brimmed with boldness. Given the implications of the scrappy carrier’s news, the superlatives were arguably a harbinger of war. A fare war, to be exact. The ULCC plans to double its footprint by next summer, adding 21 cities and 85 routes for a total of 1,000. The expansion has a heavy focus on Florida and Denver, Frontier’s home base, and is part of a planned expansion that will see its fleet rise from 75 Airbus A320-family aircraft to 120 planes by 2022. By spreading its lower fare flights across most of the country, Frontier crowed, it will save travellers more than US$1b. The news drew a quick response from United’s president, Scott Kirby, who has used the phrase “natural share” to describe his company’s growth plans at its main airports. <br/>
unaligned
It seems like every day a new airline finds itself in hot water over its treatment of passengers. This time, it’s Air Transat that is in the spotlight after 2 of its planes were stuck at the Ottawa airport for hours, stranding hundreds of passengers on-board. Monday, Air Transat Flight 157, which originated in Brussels, was scheduled to arrive in Montreal at 3:15 pm, but was diverted to Ottawa due to weather conditions. The plane landed at Ottawa airport just after 5 pm and sat on the tarmac for a full 6 hours. During that time the flight lost power and reportedly failed to provide passengers with food and water for an extended period of time. Things got so bad aboard the grounded flight that one passenger called 911. <br/>
Major continental European airlines are actively lobbying their govts to make the UK aviation sector’s exit from the EU difficult, the CE of Ryanair said Wednesday. Michael O’Leary claimed that carriers such as Air France and Lufthansa would be happy to see services disrupted between the UK and the rest of Europe for a period of weeks or months, in order to damage UK carriers such as British Airways and EasyJet. The damage suffered by major European carriers if there was a major disruption of flights would be relatively small, but much more extensive for UK airlines, O’Leary said. Those would include Ryanair, which has a major network of routes between the UK and the rest of Europe. <br/>
Jazeera Airways reported a KD2.3m (US$7.6m) net profit for Q2 2017, an 18.1% improvement over its KD1.9m net profit in Q2 2016. The result was driven by a 9.5% rise in revenue to KD14m, which Jazeera management attributed to higher utilisation, better network planning and increased passenger demand. The airline posted an operating profit of KD2.2m for the quarter, up 22.9% YOY. Load factor for the quarter increased 1.5% YOY to 73.3%. Passenger yield improved 4.7% YOY. However, Jazeera Airways’ Q2 results were not enough to compensate for the airline’s Q1 KD900,000 net loss. For the first 6 months of 2017, the airline’s net profit stands at KD1.3m, down 77.3% from its KD5.7m net profit for the first half of 2016. Half-year revenue, at KD24.1m, is down 2.4% YOY. <br/>