Before We Start This Week…
It’s Official! Clear Your Calendars For August 23-25, 2020!
The 25th Annual Boyd Group International Aviation Forecast Summit will be hosted by:
Aviation’s only global forecast conference will be hosted in 2020 by the Cincinnati Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
This will be our 25th year, and we are planning an event that will deliver more data, more information, more insight, and more clear-no-nonsense future perspectives than ever before.
The Boyd Group International Aviation Forecast Summit is the one event that professionals from across the industry and across the globe attend year after year. That’s because it delivers direct data, free and clear of any second agendas. Political correctness isn’t allowed in the door.
We’ll be publishing the agenda and Workshop program over the next few weeks…
Click here for more information on the IAFS, and to register now at the special early rate.
We look forward to seeing you in Cincinnati USA!
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United A321XLR Order – New Fleet Imperative: Mission Flexibility
Coming: A Re-Ordering Of Interior U.S. Traffic Gateways
Last June, we published a press release discussing our research on emerging fleet trends at US airlines.
The prediction was that new-generation narrow-body airliners offering in-fleet mission flexibility would be the future. This would materially eclipse stratified airliner categories. It’s happening – the United XLR order should not be viewed as just 757 replacements… the wide mission capability of these airliners represent demolition of traditional fleet categories – across the entire airline industry.
The A321XWB is a prime example. It can fill the need for Newark-London, as well as operate the schedule between Newark and Detroit.
Try that with an A380, except in limited tag-markets to position the airplane, but burn enough fuel to panic the CFO.
Super Long Haul Also Coming… But It’s A Limited Application. There is a lot of buzz around Qantas’ Project Sunrise, promising nonstops to New York and London from Australia. But that mission demands an order for just just 12 A350-1000s. Super long-haul markets exist, but they’re few and far between compared to the rest of the air transportation system. The United XLR order was for 50… and toss in the rest of the backlog across the industry, it’s hundreds of new units.
As we outlined in our Global Fleet Trend & Demand Forecast delivered at last year’s International Aviation Forecast Summit, the new mission capabilities of the A321XLR and (eventually) the 737MAX are complete game-changers for U.S. airport planning.
We were the first to outline how secondary American commercial centers represent rich feed for EU and UK carriers, and the mission capabilities of these new airliner variants make it possible.
That’s happening, and with these new narrow-body, trans-Atlantic capable machines, plan on a lot of interest is what Columbus and Cincinnati can feed through SkyTeam’s hub at CDG and the Star Alliance operations at Frankfurt, Munich and Istanbul.
Airports & Communities of All Sizes Need To Get Innovative, or Get Passed Up. At the IAFS, we’ve outlined the regional and local characteristics that are start points needed for an airport to attract this coming tsunami of international access.
It’s a whole lot more than lovely brochures with pictures of the region. It’s a whole lot more than trade junkets. This is business, not a social outreach. Future applications of $50 million aircraft assets will be determined by hard, raw economics, not elaborate social events.
It means identifying the specific future economic global characteristics that match the flows over the international target carrier’s connecting hub. A lot of data, and a lot of work and a lot of futurist perspectives, such as the regional draw that such service will attract. Traditional catchment areas and leakage studies are vacuum tube approaches in a digital economic global world.
Challenges For Smaller Airports, Too. It also represents opportunities for smaller communities. Identifying where international trade and economic flows will manifest should be a key part of every airport’s long term air access program. These new international flights at secondary cities will also tend to increase draw from a much wider geographic area – and there are aggressive plans that smaller airports need to develop to address this.
Give Us A Call. Our research indicates a whole constellation of new dynamics that will attract international service at secondary points. A futurist approach, not a wallow in woefully inaccurate DOT international O&D tables. We don’t rely on past data, but instead on illuminating emerging trends that will drive support for new global access.
If your region is interested in exploring development of a Global Strategic Blueprint, give us a call, or click here to set up a discussion time.
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Flash!
On-Line Financial Site:
Air Canada Judged Financially Superior To Cadaver Carriers
Congratulations to Air Canada. Maybe.
Folks in the front offices in Montreal might be thrilled. Or, more likely, justifiably offended.
On December 9, a financial on-line source announced that in comparing key metrics at two airlines, Air Canada and Great Lakes Airlines, the Canadian carrier swept the ratings in six of the seven categories investigated.
Great Lakes was judged superior in only one area – institutional ownership. The article stated, “Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.”
Actually, this is a tremendous achievement for small, Wyoming-based Great Lakes.
Particularly in light of the fact it went completely out of business over two years ago.
Commenting under a very comprehensive metrics chart that deftly compared Air Canada’s billions in latest revenue to a total of, well, zero for Great Lakes, the article concluded with admirable insight:
“Air Canada has higher revenue and earnings than Great Lakes Aviation.”
Ya think?
You can’t make this stuff up… But it is a good example of a lot of the aviation reporting out there in webland.
Caveat reader.
Take a look by clicking here.
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FROM ALL OF US AT BOYD GROUP INTERNATIONAL, HAVE A GREAT WEEK!