German airport operator Fraport has applied for a building permit to construct a new Pier G at Frankfurt Airport to accommodate the growing low-cost segment. Construction is scheduled to begin in mid-2018. Frankfurt is Germany’s biggest airport and the major hub of Lufthansa. Fraport executive board chairman Stefan Schulte said, “Frankfurt is and will remain a hub airport. However, the development of the aviation market as a whole means that, in addition to the traditional full-service offering, we have to take the needs of low-cost providers into account and continuously enhance our processes.” Pier G was originally envisaged as the second phase in the construction of Frankfurt Airport’s new Terminal 3, but is now being realized and commissioned ahead of schedule. “The LCC market share at Frankfurt Airport is around 2%. We support growth at Frankfurt, but our main business will remain as a hub, not the LCC business,” a Fraport spokesperson said. The new pier is to be constructed in three phases. <br/>
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As low-cost carriers' portion of air traffic continues to soar in Thailand, legacy airlines are seeing their share of the sky shrink. LCCs accounted for 46.2% of all passengers moving through the country's six main airports in the first half of the year, up from 43.9% in the same period last year. Rising in tandem was the share of flights operated by LCCs, which accounted for 47.6% of overall aircraft movements recorded in the January-June period, compared with 43.7% in the previous period. LCCs have played an increasingly large role in the air transport industry, with their popularity growing among travellers because of their highly competitive fares relative to legacy airlines, fast-expanding networks and rising travel demand. Figures sourced from Airports of Thailand Plc (AoT) showed that LCCs increased their passenger numbers in the first half of the year by 13.7% to 30.5m. LCC passengers showed robust double-digit growth both internationally and domestically at 14.1% and 13.5%, respectively, to 10.9m and 19.6m. All six of the AoT-run airports saw double-digit growth in LCC passengers, who contributed to congestion at the country's three busiest airports:<br/>Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang and Phuket.<br/>
Norway’s Bergen Flesland Airport has opened a new terminal with capacity for up to 10m passengers a year. The increase in capacity at Bergen comes just months after the opening of an expanded airport in Oslo, the country’s capital. Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said the new US$470m facility is important for the wider region around the Norwegian city. “Flesland plays a vital role in tourism and industry in the region,” he said, adding the airport has doubled in capacity. “This is a state-run flagship project that has run on schedule and within budget.” The new terminal will give travelers a more spacious environment, with improved facilities. The building is designed to offer significant energy savings. Airport director Aslak Sverdrup said the improved facilities will hopefully mean “more direct flights to big, important domestic and foreign destinations.” Among improvements to the airport, sustainable biofuel will now be offered to airlines. “We are … only the second airport in Norway now making aviation biofuel available to airlines. This is an important step in establishing a market and infrastructure for the production and delivery of biofuel on a large scale,” Sverdrup said.<br/>
Airline loyalty programs are losing much of their allure even for frequent fliers, and the rules for navigating the system have changed. Flying is no longer the best way to earn miles or points. The biggest bang for your buck comes from signing up for the right credit card. And those come-ons from the airline to sell you miles? Ignore them unless you are very close to a qualifying for a big trip. Frequent-flier programs get relatively little attention from Wall Street, and their financial importance to the airlines is not widely understood by travelers, who just hope to earn a free flight now and then. Airline profits are subject to vagaries like the price of fuel, the actions of competitors on key routes, even the weather. Amid all that uncertainty, the airlines have found a reliable source of revenue in selling miles to banks, which then use the miles to persuade consumers to sign up for the cards and use them as much as possible. "The bottom line is that the business of selling miles is a very profitable one and has proven historically to be far less cyclical than the core airline," Joseph DeNardi, a Stifel analyst who tracks airlines, said this month in a note to clients. The downside for airline customers is that the world is awash in frequent-flier miles, and the airlines are constantly making each mile, or point, less valuable. Many trips don't earn as many miles or points as they once did, and the price for claiming a reward flight keeps going up. In many cases, availability of reward seats on flights has gotten worse.<br/>